Preliminary results of noncontact respiration and heartbeat detection using IR-UWB radar

This paper addresses a biomedical application of customized signal processing using the ultra-wideband impulse (IR-UWB) radar which realizes the noncontact heartbeat and respiration rate detection. Microwave radar technology offers a noncontact, quick cardiopulmonary monitoring technique and has potential for biomedical applications. We studied the effect of suppression to remove the stationary background clutter, and separated the respiratory signal with weak heartbeat signal using the high order band pass filters. The experimental results have shown the accuracy and robustness of our system in respiration and heartbeat detection with noncontact distances from 0.2 m to 1.0 m.