A Doppler Radar System for Sensing Physiological Parameters in Walking and Standing Positions

Sensors (Basel). 2017 Mar 1;17(3):485. doi: 10.3390/s17030485.

Abstract

Doppler radar can be implemented for sensing physiological parameters wirelessly at a distance. Detecting respiration rate, an important human body parameter, is essential in a range of applications like emergency and military healthcare environments, and Doppler radar records actual chest motion. One challenge in using Doppler radar is being able to monitor several patients simultaneously and in different situations like standing, walking, or lying. This paper presents a complete transmitter-receiver Doppler radar system, which uses a 4 GHz continuous wave radar signal transmission and receiving system, to extract base-band data from a phase-shifted signal. This work reports experimental evaluations of the system for one and two subjects in various standing and walking positions. It provides a detailed signal analysis of various breathing rates of these two subjects simultaneously. These results will be useful in future medical monitoring applications.

Keywords: Doppler radar; arctangent demodulation; physiological parameters monitoring; remote sensing; respiration rate.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Monitoring, Physiologic
  • Posture
  • Radar
  • Respiration
  • Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Walking*