A Silicon-Based Adaptable Edge Coherent Radar Platform for Seamless Health Sensing and Cognitive Interactions With Human Subjects

Empowered by the rapid advancements of semiconductor techniques, emerging areas such as industry 4.0, precise healthcare, pervasive communications, intelligent robots, and smart buildings are to be realized, which put substantial demands on low-power and high-performance cognitive edge sensors. Capabilities of precise sensing and seamless interactions with human subjects are pivotal to boosting versatile Internet of Everything (IoE) applications. However, it is challenging to attain various kinds of intuitive sensing based on one edge sensor. A novel silicon-based phased-array coherent radar sensing platform is proposed to attain versatile application-driven capabilities by focusing the wideband radar beams accurately at the target's direction to attain precise sensing. The coherent radar platform can support a maximum 60° field-of-view sensing range with smaller than 2° optimum steering step resolution and −70-dBm sensitivity. The silicon-based mixed-signal coherent radar chip platform is fabricated by a 65-nm CMOS process and owns the convenience for massive deployments at the edge. A series of experiments were conducted to validate the integrated radar platform's adaptable capabilities and salient performances on human subject detection, vital signs monitoring, and motion recognition. Notably, the adaptable multifunction integrated radar platform opens up the enticing possibility for next-generation monolithic edge devices supporting seamless health sensing and cognitive interactive functions with human subjects.