Respiration tracking through mmWave MIMO Radars

Regular monitoring of people’s vital signs is of paramount importance to promptly detect anomalies and prevent possibly dangerous consequences. In particular, the respiratory rate is significant in identifying pathological conditions. Nowadays, the most common approach towards this consists in using wearable devices or other contact sensors that are worn by the user. However, this may be uncomfortable and even infeasible in some situations, e.g., for subjects with burned body parts or that are not compliant. In addition, it may expose the personnel to the risk of contagion when dealing with infected people. The radar system has been appointed as one of the most contactless tools to overcome these problems, in particular, the Millimeter Wave, which is a special class of radar technology that uses short wavelength electromagnetic waves. However, in real-time scenarios, this technology faces different challenges. Most of the problems come from the subject’s movement and even a small change in the subject’s position can change the respiratory rate estimation. For this reason, the major part of the literature is focused on single and/or multi-subjects static, with a limited range of motion. In this work, I employed an FMCW Radar for remote monitoring of the respiratory rate of a single subject in a static scenario, in which the subject can not move, and in a dynamic scenario, in which the subject walks inside a room. The results acquired can be seen through a qualitative measurement, proving the possibility to retrieve a respiratory signal from the subject in a static and dynamic scenario.