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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
I. I NTRODUCTION
LAI et al.: WIRELESS SENSING OF HUMAN RESPIRATORY PARAMETERS BY LOW-POWER UWB-IR RADAR
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
Fig. 3. Signal processing block diagram showing the steps to obtain the chest movement function and respiratory rate from the recorded UWB signals.
(a) Frame-by-frame acquisition. (b) Chest movement graph. (c) Chest movement frequency power spectrum.
LAI et al.: WIRELESS SENSING OF HUMAN RESPIRATORY PARAMETERS BY LOW-POWER UWB-IR RADAR
Fig. 4.
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Experiment setup. (a) With mechanical chest phantom. (b) With human subject.
TABLE I
WEIGHTS AND HEIGHTS OF THE SUBJECTS UNDER TEST
III. R ESULTS
Fig. 5(a) and (b) shows the results of the chest phantom
movements detected with the UWB sensor. Fig. 5(a) shows that
very small movements of about +/ 0.05 mm in amplitude
are detected, even when the phantom is stationary, which is due
to the presence of the system noise. Fig. 5(b) shows that the
detected relative phantom movements peak-to-peak amplitude
is within 0.40.6 mm (or 0.5 +/ 0.05 mm) when the actual
phantom movement is 0.5 mm. This shows that the system
is able to detect the relative movement amplitude accurately
within a +/ 0.05-mm tolerance.
The human chest movements amplitudes measured from the
backscattered UWB signals and from the respiratory band are
shown in Figs. 69. The results are for four human subjects at
distances of 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 m, respectively. The results from
the UWB signal are indicated by the legend UWB, and the
results from the respiratory band are indicated by the legend
Band in these figures.
The correlation coefficients between the measurement results
of the UWB signal and the respiratory band for each subject at
different distances are summarized in Table II. It shows that the
respiratory waveforms obtained with the UWB method are well
correlated with the respiratory band waveforms for larger sized
human subjects even at a relatively long distance, as indicated
by the results for Subjects 1 and 2. Whereas for the smaller
sized subjects, i.e., Subjects 3 and 4, the respiratory patterns
are well correlated for the measurement at near distances.
To improve the measurement results of the UWB scheme
when the subject is far from the sensor, we propose a
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
Fig. 5. (a) Detected noise when chest phantom is motionless (b). Detected motion when chest phantom movement is set to 0.5 mm.
Fig. 6. Chest movement function for the four human subjects in sitting position at a 0.5-m distance from the sensor. (a) Subject 1. (b) Subject 2. (c) Subject 3.
(d) Subject 4.
LAI et al.: WIRELESS SENSING OF HUMAN RESPIRATORY PARAMETERS BY LOW-POWER UWB-IR RADAR
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Fig. 7. Chest movement function for the four human subjects in sitting position at a 1-m distance from the sensor. (a) Subject 1. (b) Subject 2. (c) Subject 3.
(d) Subject 4.
Fig. 8. Chest movement function for the four human subjects in sitting position at a 1.5-m distance from the sensor. (a) Subject 1. (b) Subject 2. (c) Subject 3.
(d) Subject 4.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
Fig. 9. Chest movement function for the four human subjects in sitting position at a 2-m distance from the sensor. (a) Subject 1. (b) Subject 2. (c) Subject 3.
(d) Subject 4.
TABLE II
CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS BETWEEN RESPIRATORY WAVEFORMS
OBTAINED WITH UWB METHOD AND WITH RESPIRATORY BAND
LAI et al.: WIRELESS SENSING OF HUMAN RESPIRATORY PARAMETERS BY LOW-POWER UWB-IR RADAR
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Fig. 12. Spectrum of the respiration waveforms when the four human subjects in sitting position are at a 0.5-m distance from the sensor. (a) Subject 1. (b) Subject
2. (c) Subject 3. (d) Subject 4.
TABLE III
BREATHING RATES (BPM) OBTAINED WITH RESPIRATORY BAND AND WITH UWB METHOD
movement amplitude greatly improves the accuracy of the results, particularly for Subject 4. More than 100% improvement
in the correlation coefficients is achieved for Subject 4.
To get the respiratory rates of the subjects, the chest
movement functions are transformed from the time domain
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
Fig. 13. Correlation coefficients between respiratory waveforms obtained with UWB sensor and with respiratory band for 60 min of recording.
Fig. 14. Respiratory waveforms where the subject temporarily stopped breathing for about 40 s.
ject temporarily stopped breathing for about 40 s. The stopbreathing event is successfully detected by both the UWB
sensor and the respiratory band.
During his/her sleep, the subject might turn and sleep on
his side sometimes. These instances are recorded as shown in
Fig. 15. It is clearly seen from the figure that the respiratory
band is still able to measure the breathing, whereas the UWB
sensor is unable to detect the chest movement. This is due to
the inappropriate illumination of the patients body by the fixed
antenna, that is, the signal backscattering is mostly from the
side of the body and not on the chest. To solve this problem,
multiple sensors can be placed at multiple desired locations to
ensure that the backscattered signal could be detected by at least
one sensor.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, the UWB microwave carrierless impulse radar
has been investigated for the simultaneous tracking of the
human respiratory rate and amplitude with both the mechanical
chest phantom and human subject measurements. The results of
this paper show that the UWB microwave impulse could be employed to detect both the human respiration rate and amplitude
accurately. By using the multipeak detection method, the results
are improved significantly, particularly for a measurement at
a longer distance. The correlation coefficients of 0.500.83
LAI et al.: WIRELESS SENSING OF HUMAN RESPIRATORY PARAMETERS BY LOW-POWER UWB-IR RADAR
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Fig. 15. Respiratory waveforms obtained when the subject turned to sleep on his side.
[7] I. Immoreev and S. Ivashov, Remote monitoring of human cardiorespiratory system parameters by radar and its applications, in Proc. Ultrawideband Ultrashort Impulse Signals, Sep. 1519, 2008, pp. 3438.
[8] K. Higashikaturagi, Y. Nakahata, I. Matsunami, and A. Kajiwara, Noninvasive respiration monitoring sensor using UWB-IR, in Proc. IEEE
ICUWB, Sep. 1012, 2008, vol. 1, pp. 101104.
[9] FCC (GPO) Title 47, Section 15 of the Code of Federal Regulations
SubPart F: Ultra-wideband, Aug. 2003.
[10] L. W. Chua, A new UWB antenna with excellent time domain characteristics, in Proc. Eur. Conf. Wireless Technol., Oct. 2005, pp. 531534.
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antennas.
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