Remote Vital Sign Monitoring With Reduced Random Body Swaying Motion Using Heartbeat Template and Wavelet Transform Based on Constellation Diagrams

Remote vital signs monitoring using millimeter-wave (mmWave) sensors has gained lots of attention because of their contactless, portable advantages. However, their received signals are more sensitive to random body motions (RBM) which degrades the accuracy of heart rate (HR) detection. To overcome this challenge, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) configuration can be used to reduce RBM's impact as each channel has different points of view with respect to the subject under test (SUT). Here we propose the use of a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar from Texas Instruments (TI) at 77 GHz to collect data from its 192-channel configuration. Since vital sign information extracted using Arctangent Demodulation (AD) could be corrupted by either RBM or respiratory harmonics, a method is needed to minimize such effects. Hence, we develop an algorithm where a Heartbeat Template (HBT) is extruded based on the Constellation Diagram that shows the Quadrature signals from the target's range profile. The HBT is then used to design an adapted-wavelet for Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) to magnify the heartbeat signals. Under circumstances where RBM overwhelms the heartbeat signal that the HBT cannot completely reduce its effects, a spectral-based HR selection method is also developed to estimate the HR. By employing the proposed methods, we have reduced mean-errorμ ₑof HR estimation significantly from 9 bpm to less than 2 bpm.