Non-contact Monitoring of Respiration and Heart Activity of Infants Using UWB Signals

The main purpose of this contribution is to introduce a new system which is able to simultaneously to monitor the breathing and heart activity of an infant. The working frequency band of the system is 1-8 GHz. Three bow-tie antennas (1 transmitter Tx and 2 receivers Rx) are placed over the neonatal. The antennas are placed 60 cm above the infant. In case of measurement the Tx antenna is emitting the UWB signal, which is reflected from the body and detected by the Rx antennas. The static background is subtracted by the signal mean value. The detection principle is based on the knowledge that the respiratory frequency of an infant (1-3 years old) is around 1 Hz and the movement of the chest is about 0.2 mm. This can be detected via UWB radar as peak detection and its movement caused by breathing. In case of infants' apnea, we propose a dynamic threshold. From the signal it is also possible to detect the heart activity.