Proceedings of IC-NIDC2014

VITAL SIGN MONITORING OF A

NON-STATIONARY HUMAN THROUGH IR-UWB
RADAR
Faheem Khan, Jeong Woo Choi, Sung Ho Cho
Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering Hanyang University 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seoul, Korea
faheem@casp.hanyang.ac.kr, jwchoi@casp.hanyang.ac.kr, dragon@hanyang.ac.kr
Abstract: In this paper the vital sign monitoring of a
non-stationary human are measured by combining vital
sign monitoring algorithm with movement detection
method. First respiration and heart beat rate for a
stationary human are explained and then a method for
movement detection is discussed. The movement
detection method is based on the autocorrelation
property of a signal. Once the movement is detected then
the most recent measurement value (before the
movement is detected) is considered as the
measurements throughout the motion period. And then
the measurement process is restored when object comes
back to stationary state. Experimental results are given
to prove the stability of the algorithm.

whereas respiration can cause displacement from 1mm

to several mm [7]. The component of respiration signal
is higher in magnitude because of its high displacement
as compared to heart. The heart rate is hard to detect
accurately as the respiration harmonics or
intermodulation products of respiration and heart rate
may fall into the valid heart frequency range [8]. The
main objective of our work is to develop an algorithm
for detection of respiration and heart rate of a human
which can move while sitting in front of the radar.
The person is sitting at a distance of about 1m in front of
the IR-UWB radar. The impulse radar chip used for
experiment is Novelda NVA6201. Sinuous Antenna is
used for the experiment. It has opening angle of 35-40
degree in both horizontal and vertical direction. The
time duration of a pulse is about 1ns. The signal
transmitted from the radar is reflected back from the
target body which contains information of the chest
displacement over time. The received waveforms are
stored in a matrix , where and represent
the sample waveform in slow time and samples in fast
time domain respectively. From the matrix obtained for
different waveform, the sample n is found by searching
the maximum energy through all columns. This column
refers to the maximum displacement point and hence it
shows the location of the person. We apply FFT to the
column of maximum energy to find the frequency
domain equivalent of the signal. The respiration and
heart rate are extracted from the resulting spectrum
according to algorithm given in Sect. 5.

Keywords: vital signs, respiration rate, heartbeat

frequency, non-stationary,
movement detection,
autocorrelation

1 Introduction
Federal communications commission (FCC) legalized
the use of UWB technology in February 2002 and it
released the spectral masks for emission level and
operating frequency used in radar, imaging and data
communication which resulted in a huge interest of
researchers community in use of UWB technology [11].
UWB technology transmits and receives information
over a larger range of bandwidth (greater than 500 MHz)
and it shares the bandwidth with other users. UWB
technology uses highly intense pulses. Due to which it
can be used for remote wireless monitoring and
measuring of motion of patient [1]. Impulse Radio (IR)
UWB is a type of UWB signaling that makes use of the
streams of baseband pulses with extremely short
duration, typically of nanosecond order, hence spreading
the radio signals power spectral density form almost
zero to a few gigahertz. The properties of UWB radar
such as lower power consumption, less amount of
interference and multipath effect and co-existence with
other devices makes it a better choice to be used in
medical applications [2-5].

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2,

the related work is mentioned. Sect. 3 and Sect. 4 are
regarding the problem statement and movement
detection algorithm respectively. Sect. 5 explains the
algorithm for respiration and heart rate of a
non-stationary human. Experimental Results are given in
Sect. 6. The paper is concluded in Sect. 7.

2 Related work
A lot of research has been done for continuous time
non-invasive monitoring of vital signs of a patient
through UWB radar systems [1-2] [8-9]. Researchers in
Ref. [1] have presented method for measuring the
breathing and heart rate of a standstill body in front of
radar. In Ref. [2] the mathematical modeling of the
received waveform is presented and magnitude of
different breathing harmonics and intermodulation

In literature UWB and Doppler radars have been used as

alternative options for accurate estimation of vital signs
such as breathing signal [2] [6]. However, the advantage
of UWB over Doppler radar is that of higher penetration
rate which makes it a better choice for detection of vital
signs through the wall or some other obstacle [2]. In rest
position, heart displaces the chest around 0.08 mm
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978-1-4799-4734-8 /14/$31.00 2014 IEEE


Proceedings of IC-NIDC2014

products of breathing and heart rate are derived by using

Bessel functions and Fourier transformation. An MTI
filter is proposed to cancel out the breathing harmonics.
In Ref. [8] a new algorithm Harmonic Path Algorithm
(HAPA) is proposed which makes use of the
fundamental as well as harmonics of the heart rate signal
to improve the accuracy of heart rate detection. The
authors in Ref. [9] presented algorithm to detect motion
rate based on energy in frequency for finding the
respiration rate of the target body. In Ref. [10] the
authors have suggested a new method in which more
than one peak are selected in the heart frequency range
and the process is repeated for several iterations and the
peak which is repeated highly is selected as heart rate. In
Ref. [12] an algorithm based on wavelet transform is
proposed for estimation of heart and breathing rates for
continuous monitoring of a patient.

Normalized Magnitude

-500

0
Lag

500

1000

1500

The width of the main lobe (centered at zero) is

considered as the criteria of moment detection. If the
width of this lobe becomes extremely narrower than the
stationary case, then the body is supposed to be
non-stationary. Otherwise, the body is considered as
stationary. Let be the average width of the main lobe
in stationary state, is the width when the object is
moving and c is constant which shows the sensitivity of
motion sensing (here a value of 3 is assigned) then the
relation given in following equation is used for moment
detection
 

(1)

The relation in Eq. (1) means that the width of

autocorrelation function is decreased during motion of
human in front of radar, which means that the signal is
varied fast and thus has less correlation with its shifted
version in time domain. Fig. 1 show the normalized
autocorrelation function of the signal from the stationary
human whereas in Fig. 2 the person is in motion state. It
is clear that the width of main lobe in Fig. 1 is three time
more wider than width of Fig. 1.

Movement detection algorithm

In autocorrelation the signal is matched with its shifted

version. It shows how fast the signal changes. If the
subject in front of the radar is stationary then the signal
changes very slowly. While if the target is moving then
the signal varies very fast. The following two graphs
show the autocorrelation of two signals in case of
stationary and non-stationary human.

5 Respiration and heart-rate detection

An averaging filter is used to remove the clutter from the

reflected signal. The signal is converted to frequency
domain by using Fast Fourier transform. The respiration
rate is simply the highest peak among the values in the
spectrum. The heart rate is found by using algorithm in
Ref. [10]. But before finding the heart and breathing
rates, the object is checked whether stationary or
non-stationary. If the object is stationary, then then
respiration and heart rate are calculated. Otherwise, the
most recent value of respiration and heart rate is
maintained, and the movement is continuously checked.
When the body comes to stationary position, then
respiration and heart rates are calculated again. The
following block diagram explains the concept clearly.

0.5
Normalized Value

-1000

Figure 2 Normalized autocorrelation function of signal

reflected from non-stationary human

In real life, it is not possible for a person to be stationary

for longer time. Therefore, some method is required to
detect motion of the human and still able to calculate the
vital signs. The motion may either be caused by the
subject or by the radar. In our work, we have considered
the radar as stationary while the person may be
non-stationary. In next section algorithm for
measurement of vital signs of moving human is
presented and experimental results are also shown to
prove the validity of proposed method.

-0.5

-1
-1500

-0.5
-1500

Problem statement

0.5

-1000

-500

500

1000

1500

Lag

Figure 1 Normalized autocorrelation function of signal

reflected from stationary human



Proceedings of IC-NIDC2014

6 Experimental results
The breathing rate is measured in case of stationary and
non-stationary subject. The person is sitting at a distance
of approximately 1 meter from the radar. The result of
the breathing rate estimation without movement
detection is shown in Fig. 4. The person is sitting idle
in the period of sample 1-50. It moves in period 51-62
and then stops motion. From Fig. 4, it is clear that
without movement detection, it shows the false
breathing rate during motion period.

Clutter Removal

N peaks in
range of 0.8 to
2 Hz

Movement
Detection

35
30

Select highest
peak as
respiration
frequency

Beats/Minute

25

Frequency
domain
transformation

20
X= 78
Y= 13.6603

15
10
5
0
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Time

Figure 4 Respiration rate values of a non-stationary

human without motion detection

Figure 3 Detection of heart and respiration rate (process

is repeated M times)

In Fig. 5, the movement is detected at sample 51 and the

value for breathing rate at 50 is kept constant until the
motion period is ended. After the motion period is
finished, it again starts measurement of respiration rate
as according to the algorithm. It shows better result as
compared to Fig. 4.

The respiration rate is estimated easily by detecting the

highest peak in the range of respiration frequencies i.e.
10 to 30 beats per minute. Since the heart rate frequency
may be located close to the harmonics of respiration
frequency and/or the intermodulation products of
respiration and heart frequencies, therefore, some
filtering technique is required to extract the heart rate
from the desired range of frequencies. A bank of notch
filters with sharp bandwidth is used to separate the heart
rate from the respiration harmonics [10]. N peak values
are determined in the range of 0.8 to 2 Hz from the
resulting spectrum. The process is repeated M times and
the frequency with highest number of repetition and
maximum mean value is selected as heart rate. The
algorithm is summarized as follows.

14
X= 78
Y= 12.6925

12

Beats/Minute

10
8
6
4

Algorithm: Vital Signs detection of non-stationary

human
1. Remove the clutter from the received signal.
2. Find the status of the target, whether it is
stationary or moving. If the object is moving,
keep the most recent values of respiration and
heart rate for the period of motion, otherwise,
go to step 3.
3. Transform the signal to frequency domain by
using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).
4. Detect the highest peak of spectrum as breathing
rate
5. Find the heart rate by using algorithm in [10].
6. Go back to step 2.

2
0
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Time

Figure 5 Respiration rate values of a non-stationary

human with motion detection

In the second experiment, the heart rate is estimated for

a non-stationary person. In Fig. 6, the stationary period
starts from sample 1-75. At sample 75, the person starts
motion which result in wrong estimation of heart rate as
it is clear from Fig. 6.



Proceedings of IC-NIDC2014

where the patient moves for a short duration of time

while the steady state of patient is stationary. Our future
goal is that instead of avoiding the vital signs in motion
period and waiting for the patient to come into rest
position, we will focus on determining the vital signs
during the motion period.

100

Beats/Minute

80

60

Acknowledgements

40

This research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science,

ICT&Future Planning), Korea, under the ITRC (Information
Technology Research Center) support program (NIPA-2014H0301-14-1017) supervised by the NIPA (National IT Industry
Promotion Agency)

20

0
0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Time

Figure 6 Heart beat rate values of a non-stationary

human without motion detection

References
[1]

Di Lena, Luigi. "Vital signs monitoring using Ultra Wide

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Enrico
M.
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[6] M.Y.W.Chia,
S.W.Leong,
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Through-wall UWB radar operating within FCCs
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[9] Sharafi, Azadeh, Mehran Baboli, and Mohammad Eshghi.
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[10] Faheem Khan, Jeong Woo Choi and Sung Ho Cho.
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2009.

In Fig. 7, the motion is detected at sample 76, and the

value of heart rate at sample 75 is retained for the whole
motion period. Therefore, it result in better estimation as
compared to Fig. 6.
70
60

Beats/Minute

50
40
30
20
10
0
0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Time

Figure 7 Heart beat rate values of a non-stationary

human with motion detection

From the above experimental results, it is clear that if we

observe the motion of body in each iteration before
measuring the vital signs and instead of wrong detection
of respiration and heart rates, it is better to keep the most
recent measurement value (before the motion starts) for
the period of motion until the object come back to its
stationary position.

Conclusions and future work

The measurement of vital signs for non-stationary

human is discussed. The autocorrelation concept is used
to detect the motion of target. If the signal is changing
fast in the time domain and the width of the main lobe
decreases then motion is detected and the most recent
values of respiration and heart rates are maintained
during motion period. However, the algorithm doesnt
calculate the vital signs during the motion period (it only
maintains the most recent measurement value before the
motion period as the values throughout the motion
period) and waits until the object becomes stationary.
Therefore, this algorithm is working in circumstances