Cardiorespiratory Frequency Monitoring using PCA on UWB radar signal

What is it about?

In this paper, Principal Component Analysis technique is applied on the signal measured by an ultra wide-band radar to compute the breath and heart rate of volunteers. The measurement set-up is based on an indirect time domain reflectometry technique, using an ultra wide-band antenna in contact with the subject’s thorax, at the heart height, and a vector network analyzer. The Principal Component Analysis is applied on the signal reflected by the thorax and the obtained breath frequencies are compared against measures acquired by a piezoelectric belt, a widely used commercial system for respiratory activity monitoring. Breath frequency results show that the proposed approach is suitable for breath activity monitoring. Moreover, the wearable ultra wide-band radar gives also promising results for heart activity frequency detection.

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Why is it important?

Obtained results of the respiratory frequency are comparable with a traditional technique (i.e., the piezoelectric belt) for normal and deep respiratory condition. Moreover, in the cases where the piezoelectric belt fails, that is, in the case of normal breath with movement of the arms, the UWB radar shows results in compliance with standard values. Concerning the heart activity, UWB radar results are encouraging.