Abstract
Microwave radar technology is very attractive for ubiquitous short-range health monitoring due to its non-contact, see-through, privacy-preserving and safe features compared to the competing remote technologies such as optics. The possibility of radar-based approaches for breathing and cardiac sensing was demonstrated a few decades ago. However, investigation regarding the robustness of radar-based vital-sign monitoring (VSM) is not available in the current radar literature. In this paper, we aim to close this gap by presenting an extensive experimental study of vital-sign radar approach. We consider diversity in test subjects, fitness levels, poses/postures, and, more importantly, random body movement (RBM) in the study. We discuss some new insights that lead to robust radar heart-rate (HR) measurements. A novel active motion cancellation signal-processing technique is introduced, exploiting dual ultra-wideband (UWB) radar system for motion-tolerant HR measurements. Additionally, we propose a spectral pruning routine to enhance HR estimation performance. We validate the proposed method theoretically and experimentally. Totally, we record and analyze about 3500 s of radar measurements from multiple human subjects.
Highlights
Vital-sign monitoring (VSM) devices are extremely important for human healthcare and wellness, whether it be consumer-grade devices that promote self-health monitoring or medical-grade devices that aid in early diagnosis and facilitate treatment
The radio frequency (RF) waveform front single sensor and dualsensor are compared to show the effect of RF fusion for motion cancellation (Figure 5a–c)
The active motion cancellation is achieved via direct RF signal fusion from the two radar sensors
Summary
Microwave ultra-wideband (UWB) radar systems have good penetrative capability and range resolution, which enables them to non-invasively monitor internal physiological motion of the organs of a body, such as the heart or lungs, by transmitting low-energy electromagnetic waves. Such radar systems can extract the heart-rate (HR) and breathing rate (BR) of a subject remotely from a distance. The non-contact feature of radar makes it extremely useful for healthcare applications, such as remote patient monitoring, and enabling a more comfortable and efficient caregiving
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