Novel Respiration-Free Heartbeat Detection Algorithm Using Millimeter-Wave Radar: Invited Paper

Yu Rong, Kumar Vijay Mishra, Daniel W. Bliss

Abstract: This paper proposes a new remote heartbeat detection algorithm with millimeter wave radar system. With improved sensitivity from using millimeter waves, smaller magnitude and higher frequency chest vibrations due to heart sound can be recovered. The proposed algorithm estimates heart rate from the cyclical frequency of the heart sound rather than the lower frequency heartbeat motion. While the latter one is mainly used by conventional radar-based heartbeat detection methods. It is known that these conventional methods suffer from the breathing motion coupling issue for obtaining clean heartbeat signal. Now, with the proposed algorithm, enhanced heartbeat detection performance is achieved because the large spectral separation between breathing motion (< 1 Hz) and heart sound (20 Hz to 200 Hz). Experiments verify that the proposed algorithm can accurately estimate heart rate based on the heart sound under shallow, normal, deep breathing motions.