Effect of Obstacle Attenuation on Human Respiratory Detection using IR-UWB Sensor

Because of COVID-19 pandemic, medical doctors have a higher risk when diagnosing patients during standard routine such as checking up for respiratory profiles and other vital signs. A possible alternative for contact-based device such as stethoscope is a contactless respiratory sensor which can reduce touching or close-contact with infected patients. This study aims to study the effects of different obstacle attenuations which could occur when doctors would like to monitor respiratory profile of a patient using contactless sensor from another room or when the patient is physically separated by shield or wall. In this work, a commercial evaluation kit of respiratory sensor based on impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) is experimented with six obstacle materials which are mirror, glass, metal sheet, brick wall, bottled water, and wood. The results showed that the reflected signal of stationary subject after penetrating obstacles could detect human respiratory rate and breathing pattern with good quality at the distance 0.75 to 3 meters between the sensor and a human subject when the obstacle was at 0.5 meters from the sensor.