Complex Signal Demodulation and Random Body Movement
Cancellation Techniques for Non-contact Vital Sign Detection
Changzhi Li, and Jenshan Lin
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA
Abstract - A complex signal demodulation technique is
proposed to eliminate the null detection point problem in non-
contact vital sign detection. This technique is robust against DC
offset in direct conversion system. Based on the complex signal
demodulation, a random body movement cancellation technique
is developed to cancel out strong noise caused by random body
movement in non-contact vital sign monitoring. Multiple
transceivers and antennas with polarization and frequency
multiplexing are used to detect signals from different body
orientations. The noise due to random body movement is
cancelled out based on different patterns of the desired and
undesired signals. Experiments by highly compact 5-6 GHz
portable radar systems have been performed to verify these two
techniques.
Index Terms - non-contact, Doppler radar sensor, respiration,
cardiopulmonary, vital sign, wireless, random body movement,
complex signal, polarization multiplexing.
I. INTRODUCTION
Remote non-contact vital sign detection based on
microwave Doppler phase modulation effect has been studied
for many years [1]-[6]. To achieve accurate and robust
performance, researchers have spent great efforts for more
than two decades on several technical challenges.
As one of the main challenges, the null detection point
problem was solved by the frequency tuning technique [4] in
double-sideband system and by the arctangent demodulation
in quadrature demodulation system [6]. However, the
frequency tuning technique requires tuning the intermediate
frequency once the distance between the antenna and the
subject changes; and the arctangent demodulation is sensitive
to DC offset thus requires complicated calibration of the DC
offset. Another traditional way using quadrature demodulation
is to decide in real time which channel is away from the null
detection point [3].
In this paper, a complex signal reconstruction method is
proposed to eliminate the null detection point problem. This
technique is easy to be implemented, and does not require
frequency tuning or the decision of which channel is out of
the null detection point. Meantime, it is robust against DC
offset, which can be removed by extracting the average signal
from every time domain sliding signal window.
Another main challenge for non-contact vital sign detection
is the noise caused by the random body movement, which
presents severe interference for accurate detection of
respiration and heartbeat signal in practical applications. Since
random body movement is comparable or even stronger than
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the weak vital sign signal, to some extent it is the main factor
limiting broad applications of non-contact vital sensors. It will
be shown in this paper that the different movement patterns of
random body movement and physiological movement make it
possible to remove the unwanted signal from the vital signs.
The random body movement cancellation technique uses
multiple antennas and transceivers to detect from the front and
the back of the human body. Based on polarization and
frequency multiplexing, signals detected from different body
orientations are combined without interfering each other and
noise caused by random body movement can be cancelled out.
II. COMPLEX SIGNAL DEMODULATION
For non-contact quadrature demodulation of vital sign, the
signals detected by the I and the Q channels can be expressed
and analyzed by spectral analysis as follows [5]:
-
I( t ) -cos (4JTxh (t) 4JTxr (t) .-h)
---+---+~
A A
00 00 4JTm 4JTm
= L LJk(-_r)J,(_ _h)cos(kOJrt+lOJht+¢) (1.a)
k=-oo/=-oo A A
= -2[ ClOsin(OJJ)+Co1sin(OJht)+·· ·]-sin¢
+ 2 [C2ocos(20Jrt)+Co2COs(20Jht)+ .. ·]-cos¢
_ . (4JTx h (t) 47TXr (t) .-h)
Q( t ) -SIn ---+---+~
A A
~ ~ 4JTm 4JTm. (1 b)
= ~ ~ Jk(_ _r)J/(--h):,In(kOJrt+lOJht+¢) .
k=-oo/=-oo A A
= 2 [ClOsin( OJrt)+COlsin(OJht)+· . ·]-cos¢
+ 2 [C2ocos(20Jrt)+C02COs(20Jht)+·· .]-sin ¢
where Xh(t) = mh·sinwht, xr(t) = mr·sinwrt are the periodic body
movements due to respiration and heartbeat, I n is the Bessel
function of the first kind, A is the wavelength of wireless
signal, (/J is the total residual phase accumulated in the circuit
and along the transmission path. Cij = Jl4mn/A)·-!i(4mnh/l)
determines the amplitude of every frequency component.
From Eq. 1, the ratio of cosl/J and sinl/J determines the
relative strength between the even order and the odd order
harmonics. Therefore, the optimal/null detection point is
determined by the residue phase (/J. For example, when (/J is
close to 90°, the fundamental frequency of respiration and
567
heartbeat signals dominates in the / channel while the second i.e. when the subject is roaming toward one transceiver, it is
order harmonic of desired signals dominates in the Q channel, moving away from the other transceiver.
thus / is close to the optimal detection point and Q is close to
the null detection point. When one of the two quadrature
channels is close to an optimal detection point, the other
channel should be close to the null detection point.
One way to make reliable detection in quadrature
demodulation system is to use arctangent demodulation [6] by
calculating the total Doppler phase shift as arctan[/(t)/Q(t)].
The advantage is the ability to perfectly recover the vital sign
information. However, this technique is sensitive to DC offset
since the DC offset present in any channel will change the
calculated phase shift. Unfortunately the DC offset for non-
contact vital sign detection is not only produced by the
electronic components, but also by the un-modulated reflected
signal, i.e. signal reflected from stationary objects and other Fig. 1. System setup of random body movement cancellation
technique. Two transceivers, one in front of and the other behind the
parts of the human body rather than the chest wall. Therefore,
human body, are transmitting and receiving signals with different
DC offset calibration is required once the experimental polarization and wavelength. The transceiver block diagram is
environment changes. simplified such that components not closely related to the algorithm
In the complex signal demodulation method, the complex are not shown (e.g. low noise amplifier and high gain blocks).
signal is software-reconstructed in real time by:
A. Equations
Applying the complex signal demodulation technique, the
5(1)=/(1)+ jOQ(I)=exp{j[ 41r1(1) + 41r1(I) +t/J]}
signal detected from the two transceivers can be expressed as:
=2j[ClOsin(wrt)+Colsin(wht)+·· .].ej~ (2)
da]}
(3 a)
( ) =exp ].[4Jrmrl sin(wrt) + 4Jrmhl sin(wht) +--+'f'I'
SIt 4Jrvt
+ 2 [ C2ocos(2wrt)+C02cos(2wht)+· . ·].ej~ {
~ ~ ~

where ~cp always has an amplitude of one and thus eliminates
the weight of (/J in frequency domain. Applying complex
Fourier transform to the signal Set) for spectrum analysis, the
residual phase (/J will not affect the relative strength between
the odd order and the even order frequency components. The
desired signal components (odd order tones) will always be
present in the spectrum. Meantime, the DC components
accumulated in the / and the Q channels only contribute to the
DC term in the complex signal S(t), which can be easily
removed by subtracting the complex average from the time
domain sliding signal window before spectrum analysis.
- { .[47tmr2 sin(wrt) 47tmh2 sin(mi) 47tvl A-.]} (3.b)
S2(1) -exp ] + --+If'2
Az Az Az
where v is a random variable representing the velocity of
random body movement. It should be noted that the desired
physiological signal presents a phase modulation in the
baseband signal, while the random body movement presents a
random frequency drift in the baseband signal. By multiplying
the two complex signals, the output B(t) can be obtained as:
B(I) = SI (/).S2 (I)

III. RANDOM BODY MOVEMENT CANCELLATION

= eXP{J[41i( ~l +~2 }in(liJ)) +41i( ~l +~2 }in(liJhf) (4)
Since the chest wall movement caused by respiration and
heartbeat is very small, random body movement presents a
+(l -l )41iVf+~ +¢2]}
serious noise source for non-contact vital sign detection.
47t(m +m ) 47t(m +m )
Fortunately, the noise from random body movement can be ~ exp j r~ r2 sine OJrl) + h~ h2 sine mhl)
{ [
eliminated by recognizing the movement patterns. Shown in
Fig. 1 is the block diagram of the random body movement +(P. +¢2])
cancellation technique. It should be noted that as the human
body roams randomly in a certain direction (shown as the where the approximation is valid because Aland A2 are chosen
'Body' arrow in Fig. 1), the heartbeat and the respiration to be close to each other. The operation in Eq. 4 corresponds
cause the front and the back of the chest walls to move in the to convolution and frequency shift in frequency domain, thus
opposite directions. In the view of the two transceivers, the canceling the Doppler frequency drift and only keeping the
heartbeat-and-respiration-caused body movements are in periodic Doppler phase effects.
phase, while the random body movements are out of phase,

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 Simulations have been perfonned to verify this technique.
The time domain signals detected from the front and the back
of the human body are generated from Eq. 3, where the
random body movement has a maximum of 5 cm
displacement from the original body position as shown in the
inset of Fig. 2 (a). The complex signal is obtained from Eq. 4.
The spectrum of the signal detected in each channel and the
spectrum of the complex signal are shown in Fig. 2. It is
observed that the random body movement can be removed
from the complex signal, and clear spectrum of desired signals
can be obtained.
·..·.. ·Front K5~
- Back CD
A ~
II >-
"t:l
o
co
i::
.~ 0.4
ro
::Q1J :lliJ :~
~5 70 75 80 ~5 70 75
E
o
0.2
z
00 20 40 60 80
Beats/Min (b)
Fig. 2. Simulation result of random body movement cancellation. (a)
Spectrum detected from the front and the back of the subject, the
body is moving randomly as shown in the inset. (b) Spectrum
recovered by the random body movement cancellation technique
when DC offset is calibrated out; inset: heartbeat spectrum when DC
offset/signal amplitude = 0.2 (I), 0.4 (II), and 0.6 (III);
However, the random body movement cancellation
technique is not immune from DC offset. The inset of Fig. 2
(b) shows the spectrum around the heartbeat frequency when
DC offset is present in the system. As the amplitude of DC
offset increases from 20% to 60% of the desired signal
amplitude, more noise is added to the spectrum until the
desired signal is completely overwhelmed by noise.
B. Polarization and Frequency Multiplexing
Since the two transceivers are facing each other, it is
important to prevent signal of one unit from saturating or
interfering the receiver link of the other unit. Therefore, patch
array antennas with orthogonal polarization pattern are used
for the two units. And free running VCGs are used for the two
transmitters so that A.I and A.2 are close to each other but always
have a slight difference because the system does not
incorporate any phase-locked-loop. Therefore, the signal from
one transceiver can be easily rejected by the other transceiver
in the baseband, because the small difference in the carrier
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frequency results in a large difference in baseband frequency
for vital sign detection, which is typically no higher than
several hertz.
IV. EXPERIMENT RESULT
Experiments have been perfonned in lab environment to
verify the complex signal demodulation and the random body
movement cancellation techniques. The measurements were
perfonned by 5 - 6 GHz portable radars, which integrate the
quadrature transceiver, the two-stage baseband amplifier, and
the power management circuit on a single Rogers printed
circuit board (R04350B) with a size of 6.8 cm x 7.5 cm. The
amplified baseband output signals were sampled by a 12 bit
2
multifunction data acquisition module (DAQ) and were fed
~o 10 20 3 into a laptop for real time signal processing by LabVIEW.
H ~i'Re(S) Fig. 3 shows the antennas and the identical transceivers used
,,'U\!\ I~
II, II for experiments.
80 ~5 70 75 80
100 120
Fig. 3. Two identical transceivers used in experiments. Inset: the
antenna used for each transceiver. Note that one transceiver uses
vertically polarized antenna array, while the other uses horizontally
polarized antenna array.
A single transceiver was used to illustrate the complex
signal demodulation technique. Fig. 4 shows the measurement
results obtained by slightly adjusting the subject-to-antenna
distance. Three typical cases are reported here as: (a) the I
channel was at the optimal detection point while the Q
channel was at the null detection point; (b) the Q channel at
the optimal while the I channel at the null detection point; (c)
both channels are at the midpoint between the null and the
optimal. It is observed that although the I and the Q channel
will change from one state to another (i.e. optimal/null
detection) as the distance between the antenna and the subject
changes, the reconstructed complex signal always has a stable
spectrum without the null detection point problem.
Figure 5 shows a measurement result when the two
transceivers were used to verify the random body movement
cancellation technique. During experiment, the subject under
test was gently changing position in a chair, so that the noise
of random body movement was emphasized. Since the
physiological movement at the back chest wall is weaker than
569
 02

go.
-0.2
'Wl, Iof'
-0.2
0.2

o 2 4 6 8 10 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 2 4 6 8 12
Time (Second) Time (Second) Time (Second)

a~ 1 I 1
" u 0.5 0.5 0.5
~~ r
Ul O . 0 0'
o 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Beats/Min Beats/Min Beats/Min

§I ~ o 20 40 60 80 100 120
~ 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
~ 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Beats/Min Beats/Min Beats/Min
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 4. Measurement results of complex demodulation, with the time domain signal recorded in the top figures, the I1Q channel spectrum
recorded in the middle figures, and the spectrum from the complex signal demodulation (CSD) in the bottom figures. (a) I: optimal detection,
Q: null detection; (b) I: null detection, Q: optimal detection; (c) I, Q: both at the midpoint between the optimal and the null detection points.

that at the front chest wall, the noise completely overwhelmed detection. Experiments have been performed to successfully
the physiological signal from the back, and only overwhelmed demonstrate these techniques.
the heartbeat signal from the front. When the proposed
technique was applied to combine the signals detected from
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
the front and the back of the human body, it is shown in Fig. 5
(b) that the heartbeat signal was recovered. The authors wish to acknowledge the Hittite, RFMD, and
Rogers for providing microwave integrated circuits and
laminate substrates.
E
2
o
Q)
0.5 REFERENCES
a.
C/)
[1] J. C. Lin, "Microwave sensing of physiological movement and
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u
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V. CONCLUSION
Four Sides of a Human Body," IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory
A complex signal demodulation technique is proposed in and Techniques, vol. 54, no. 12, pp. 4464-4471, December
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which is a serious problem for non-contact vital sign

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