Non-contact breathing detection using passive radar

Non-contact breathing monitoring systems are very attractive for a range of e-Healthcare applications. This paper proposes a passive radar based system for measuring human breathing rate. A novel signal processing method is introduced to extract breathing rate based on micro Doppler derived from cross ambiguity function (CAF). The passive radar system is built within a software defined radio (SDR) platform. The proposed system uses opportunistically energy harvesting transmitter as an illumination signal. Passive detection is compared and verified using the ground truth from clinical chest belt respiration detector. Two experiments have been conducted to show the feasibility of passive detection system in the line of sight and also through-wall conditions. We conclude that a low frequency narrow band signal with non-contact passive detection can offer a realistic alternative to UWB based radars for future e-Healthcare passive sensing applications.