Direct RF Signal Processing For Heart-Rate Monitoring Using UWB Impulse Radar

In this paper, we propose a new signal processing method for continuous heart-rate (HR) monitoring using ultra-wide band (UWB) impulse radar. Since the radar sensor is able to directly sample the received signal at RF satisfying the Nyquist sampling rate, the vital information is preserved in the received signal. We show that mathematically the vital signs can be extracted directly from the raw RF signal and thus the down conversion to the complex baseband is optional. Finally, we demonstrate the HR monitoring performance from the proposed direct RF signal processing technique by comparing against the existing methods using the complex baseband signal.