Non-Contact Respiratory and Heart Rate Detection Using IR-UWB Radars Under Random Body Activity

In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the daily detection of vital signs. Using impulse radio ultrawideband (IR-UWB) radars to detect vital signs [respiratory rate (RR) and heart rate (HR)] has become a research hotspot. In healthcare, long-term continual monitoring of vital signs is required. However, most research works on vital signs detection assume that the subjects always remain stationary, however, the random activity of the human body is inevitable for a long period of monitoring. This article proposes a new simple and effective algorithm for vital signs detection using only one IR-UWB radar under random activity of the human body, consisting of region of interest (ROI) detection, respiratory signal extraction, and motion detection. The detection of vital signs is finally realized when the subjects sit at desks and do daily work accompanied by common random body activities, e.g., shaking body, using phones, and turning their head. The experimental results show that motion detection can effectively improve the detection accuracy of RR and HR.

I. Introduction

The health is mainly reflected in human vital signs, especially, respiratory rate (RR) and heart rate (HR), which can directly show the physical condition of the body. Recently, non-contact vital signs detection has received more and more attention [1]. Among them, the non-contact vital signs detection based on impulse radio ultrawideband (IR-UWB) radar has a broad application prospect, such as sleep apnea monitoring [2], gesture recognition [3], natural disaster search and rescue [4], etc.