Non-Contact Vital Sign Detection Using mm-Wave Radar

Vital Sign detection using radars has been a rising technology in the fields of healthcare, security, and military purposes. Typically, radars used for these tasks operate at lower frequencies due to their low cost and and the ability to detect behind obstacles, such as walls or undre debris. However, this leads to an overall large system as the lower the frequency of operation, the larger the size of the antennas. The system size increases when multiple antennas are used for subject localization. But, with the development of millimeter- wave radars and Antenna-on-Package (AoP) solutions, a more compact and portable radar is possible. In this thesis, a commercial, compact, and portable millimeter wave radar operating at 60 GHz is used to detect the vital signs of subjects. With the use of direction of arrival, beamforming, and frequency tracking, the millimeter wave radar is able to accurately detect the heart rate and respiration rate of subjects with high accuracy. Experiments are performed involving detection with varying distances, detection through drywall, and for a single or even multiple subjects

Remote Human Vital Sign Monitoring Using Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Radar at Millimeter-Wave Frequencies

Non-contact respiration rate (RR) and heart rate (HR) monitoring using millimeter-wave (mmWave) radars has gained lots of attention for medical, civilian, and military applications. These mmWave radars are small, light, and portable which can be deployed to various places. To increase the accuracy of RR and HR detection, distributed multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar can be used to acquire non-redundant information of vital sign signals from different perspectives because each MIMO channel has different fields of view with respect to the subject under test (SUT). This dissertation investigates the use of a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar operating at 77-81 GHz for this application. Vital sign signal is first reconstructed with Arctangent Demodulation (AD) method using phase change’s information collected by the radar due to chest wall displacement from respiration and heartbeat activities. Since the heartbeat signals can be corrupted and concealed by the third/fourth harmonics of the respiratory signals as well as random body motion (RBM) from the SUT, we have developed an automatic Heartbeat Template (HBT) extraction method based on Constellation Diagrams of the received signals. The extraction method will automatically spot and extract signals’ portions that carry good amount of heartbeat signals which are not corrupted by the RBM. The extracted HBT is then used as an adapted wavelet for Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) to reduce interferences from respiratory harmonics and RBM, as well as magnify the heartbeat signals. As the nature of RBM is unpredictable, the extracted HBT may not completely cancel the interferences from RBM. Therefore, to provide better HR detection’s accuracy, we have also developed a spectral-based HR selection method to gather frequency spectra of heartbeat signals from different MIMO channels. Based on this gathered spectral information, we can determine an accurate HR even if the heartbeat signals are significantly concealed by the RBM. To further improve the detection’s accuracy of RR and HR, two deep learning (DL) frameworks are also investigated. First, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been proposed to optimally select clean MIMO channels and eliminate MIMO channels with low SNR of heartbeat signals. After that, a Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network (NN) is utilized to reconstruct the heartbeat signals that will be used to assess and select the final HR with high confidence

Non-Contact Human Motion Sensing Using Radar Techniques

Human motion analysis has recently gained a lot of interest in the research community due to its widespread applications. A full understanding of normal motion from human limb joint trajectory tracking could be essential to develop and establish a scientific basis for correcting any abnormalities. Technology to analyze human motion has significantly advanced in the last few years. However, there is a need to develop a non-invasive, cost effective gait analysis system that can be functional indoors or outdoors 24/7 without hindering the normal daily activities for the subjects being monitored or invading their privacy. Out of the various methods for human gait analysis, radar technique is a non-invasive method, and can be carried out remotely. For one subject monitoring, single tone radars can be utilized for motion capturing of a single target, while ultra-wideband radars can be used for multi-subject tracking. But there are still some challenges that need to be overcome for utilizing radars for motion analysis, such as sophisticated signal processing requirements, sensitivity to noise, and hardware imperfections. The goal of this research is to overcome these challenges and realize a non-contact gait analysis system capable of extracting different organ trajectories (like the torso, hands and legs) from a complex human motion such as walking. The implemented system can be hugely beneficial for applications such as treating patients with joint problems, athlete performance analysis, motion classification, and so on

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe wireless radio channel is typically thought of as a means to move information from transmitter to receiver, but the radio channel can also be used to detect changes in the environment of the radio link. This dissertation is focused on the measurements we can make at the physical layer of wireless networks, and how we can use those measurements to obtain information about the locations of transceivers and people. The first contribution of this work is the development and testing of an open source, 802.11b sounder and receiver, which is capable of decoding packets and using them to estimate the channel impulse response (CIR) of a radio link at a fraction of the cost of traditional channel sounders. This receiver improves on previous implementations by performing optimized matched filtering on the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) of the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), allowing it to operate at full bandwidth. The second contribution of this work is an extensive experimental evaluation of a technology called location distinction, i.e., the ability to identify changes in radio transceiver position, via CIR measurements. Previous location distinction work has focused on single-input single-output (SISO) radio links. We extend this work to the context of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio links, and study system design trade-offs which affect the performance of MIMO location distinction. The third contribution of this work introduces the "exploiting radio windows" (ERW) attack, in which an attacker outside of a building surreptitiously uses the transmissions of an otherwise secure wireless network inside of the building to infer location information about people inside the building. This is possible because of the relative transparency of external walls to radio transmissions. The final contribution of this dissertation is a feasibility study for building a rapidly deployable radio tomographic (RTI) imaging system for special operations forces (SOF). We show that it is possible to obtain valuable tracking information using as few as 10 radios over a single floor of a typical suburban home, even without precise radio location measurements

The Bi-directional Spatial Spectrum for MIMO Radar and Its Applications

<p>Radar systems have long applied electronically-steered phased arrays to discriminate returns in azimuth angle and elevation angle. On receiver arrays, beamforming is performed after reception of the data, allowing for many adaptive array processing algorithms to be employed. However, on transmitter arrays, up until recently pre-determined phase shifts had to applied to each transmitter element before transmission, precluding adaptive transmit array processing schemes. Recent advances in multiple-input multiple-output radar techniques have allowed for transmitter channels to separated after data reception, allowing for virtual non-causal "after-the-fact" transmit beamforming. The ability to discriminate in both direction-of-arrival and direction-of-departure allows for the novel ability to discriminate line-of-sight returns from multipath returns. This works extends the concept of virtual non-causal transmit beamforming to the broader concept of a bi-directional spatial spectrum, and describes application of such a spectrum to applications such as spread-Doppler multipath clutter mitigation in ground-vehicle radar, and calibration of a receiver array of a MIMO system with ground clutter only. Additionally, for this work, a low-power MIMO radar testbed was developed for lab testing of MIMO radar concepts.</p>Dissertatio

Continuous human motion recognition with a dynamic range-Doppler trajectory method based on FMCW radar

Radar-based human motion recognition is crucial for many applications, such as surveillance, search and rescue operations, smart homes, and assisted living. Continuous human motion recognition in real-living environment is necessary for practical deployment, i.e., classification of a sequence of activities transitioning one into another, rather than individual activities. In this paper, a novel dynamic range-Doppler trajectory (DRDT) method based on the frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar system is proposed to recognize continuous human motions with various conditions emulating real-living environment. This method can separate continuous motions and process them as single events. First, range-Doppler frames consisting of a series of range-Doppler maps are obtained from the backscattered signals. Next, the DRDT is extracted from these frames to monitor human motions in time, range, and Doppler domains in real time. Then, a peak search method is applied to locate and separate each human motion from the DRDT map. Finally, range, Doppler, radar cross section (RCS), and dispersion features are extracted and combined in a multidomain fusion approach as inputs to a machine learning classifier. This achieves accurate and robust recognition even in various conditions of distance, view angle, direction, and individual diversity. Extensive experiments have been conducted to show its feasibility and superiority by obtaining an average accuracy of 91.9% on continuous classification

Architectures and Algorithms for the Signal Processing of Advanced MIMO Radar Systems

This thesis focuses on the research, development and implementation of novel concepts, architectures, demonstrator systems and algorithms for the signal processing of advanced Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) radar systems. The key concept is to address compact system, which have high resolutions and are able to perform a fast radar signal processing, three-dimensional (3D), and four-dimensional (4D) beamforming for radar image generation and target estimation. The idea is to obtain a complete sensing of range, Azimuth and elevation (additionally Doppler as the fourth dimension) from the targets in the radar captures. The radar technology investigated, aims at addressing sev- eral civil and military applications, such as surveillance and detection of targets, both air and ground based, and situational awareness, both in cars and in flying platforms, from helicopters, to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and air-taxis. Several major topics have been targeted. The development of complete systems and innovative FPGA, ARM and software based digital architectures for 3D imaging MIMO radars, which operate in both Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) and Frequency Divi- sion Multiplexing (FDM) modes, with Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals, respectively. The de- velopment of real-time radar signal processing, beamforming and Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) algorithms for target detection, with particular focus on FFT based, hardware implementable techniques. The study and implementation of advanced system concepts, parametrisation and simulation of next generation real-time digital radars (e.g. OFDM based). The design and development of novel constant envelope orthogonal waveforms for real-time 3D OFDM MIMO radar systems. The MIMO architectures presented in this thesis are a collection of system concepts, de- sign and simulations, as well as complete radar demonstrators systems, with indoor and outdoor measurements. Several of the results shown, come in the form of radar images which have been captured in field-test, in different scenarios, which aid in showing the proper functionality of the systems. The research activities for this thesis, have been carried out on the premises of Air- bus, based in Munich (Germany), as part of a Ph.D. candidate joint program between Airbus and the Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture (Dipartimento Politecnico di Ingegneria e Architettura), of the University of Udine, based in Udine (Italy).Questa tesi si concentra sulla ricerca, lo sviluppo e l\u2019implementazione di nuovi concetti, architetture, sistemi dimostrativi e algoritmi per l\u2019elaborazione dei segnali in sistemi radar avanzati, basati su tecnologia Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO). Il con- cetto chiave `e quello di ottenere sistemi compatti, dalle elevate risoluzioni e in grado di eseguire un\u2019elaborazione del segnale radar veloce, un beam-forming tri-dimensionale (3D) e quadri-dimensionale (4D) per la generazione di immagini radar e la stima delle informazioni dei bersagli, detti target. L\u2019idea `e di ottenere una stima completa, che includa la distanza, l\u2019Azimuth e l\u2019elevazione (addizionalmente Doppler come quarta di- mensione) dai target nelle acquisizioni radar. La tecnologia radar indagata ha lo scopo di affrontare diverse applicazioni civili e militari, come la sorveglianza e la rilevazione di targets, sia a livello aereo che a terra, e la consapevolezza situazionale, sia nelle auto che nelle piattaforme di volo, dagli elicotteri, ai Unmanned Aerial Vehicels (UAV) e taxi volanti (air-taxis). Le tematiche affrontante sono molte. Lo sviluppo di sistemi completi e di architetture digitali innovative, basate su tecnologia FPGA, ARM e software, per radar 3D MIMO, che operano in modalit`a Multiplexing Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) e Multiplexing Frequency Diversion (FDM), con segnali di tipo FMCW (Frequency Modulated Contin- uous Wave) e Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), rispettivamente. Lo sviluppo di tecniche di elaborazione del segnale radar in tempo reale, algoritmi di beam-forming e di stima della direzione di arrivo, Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA), dei seg- nali radar, per il rilevamento dei target, con particolare attenzione a processi basati su trasformate di Fourier (FFT). Lo studio e l\u2019implementazione di concetti di sistema avan- zati, parametrizzazione e simulazione di radar digitali di prossima generazione, capaci di operare in tempo reale (ad esempio basati su architetture OFDM). Progettazione e sviluppo di nuove forme d\u2019onda ortogonali ad inviluppo costante per sistemi radar 3D di tipo OFDM MIMO, operanti in tempo reale. Le attivit`a di ricerca di questa tesi sono state svolte presso la compagnia Airbus, con sede a Monaco di Baviera (Germania), nell\u2019ambito di un programma di dottorato, svoltosi in maniera congiunta tra Airbus ed il Dipartimento Politecnico di Ingegneria e Architettura dell\u2019Universit`a di Udine, con sede a Udine

Radar ULB pour la vision à travers les murs : mise au point d'une chaîne de traitement de l'information d'un radar imageur

This report is focused on Through-the-wall surveillance (TTS) using UWB radar, with the objective of developing a complete information processing pipeline (IPP) which can be used by different types of imaging radar. To do this, we want to take into account any a priori information, nor on the target, or their environmental context. In addition, the IPP must meet criteria of adaptability and modularity to process information from two types of radar, including pulsed and FMCW developed in two projects that are part of the work of this thesis. Radar imaging is an important point in this context ; we approach it by combining backprojection and trilateration algorithms and show the improvement with the use of a CFAR detector taking into account the shape of the targets signatures.The development of the IPP is our main contribution. The flow of radar images obtained is divided into two parts. The first dynamic sequence contains moving targets are tracked by a multiple hypothesis approach. The second static sequence contains stationary targets and interior walls that are highlighted by Radon transformbases approach. We developed a simulator operating in time and frequency domain to design the algorithms of the IPP and test their robustness. Several simulated scenarios and experimental measurements show that our IPP is relevant and robust. It is thus validated for both radar systems.Nous nous intéressons dans cette thèse à la vision à travers les murs (VTM) par radar ULB, avec comme objectif la mise au point d’une chaîne de traitement de l’information (CTI) complète pouvant être utilisée par différents types de radar imageur VTM. Pour ce faire, nous souhaitons prendre en compte le moins possible d’information a priori, ni sur les cibles, ni sur leur contexte environnemental. De plus, la CTI doit répondre à des critères d’adaptabilité et de modularité pour pouvoir traiter les informations issues de deux types de radar, notamment, le pulsé et le FMCW, développés dans deux projets dans lesquels s’inscrivent les travaux de cette thèse. L’imagerie radar est un point important dans ce contexte, nous l’abordons par la combinaison des algorithmes de rétroprojection et trilatération, et montrons l’amélioration apportée avec l’utilisation d’un détecteur TFAC prenant en compte la forme des signatures des cibles. La mise au point de la CTI est notre principale contribution. Le flux d’images radar obtenu est scindé en deux parties. La première séquence dynamique contient les cibles mobiles qui sont ensuite suivies par une approche multihypothèse. La seconde séquence statique contient les cibles stationnaires ainsi que les murs intérieurs qui sont détectés par une méthode s’appuyant sur la transformée de Radon. Nous avons produit un simulateur VTM fonctionnant dans le domaine temporel et fréquentiel pour mettre au point les algorithmes de la CTI et tester leur robustesse. Plusieurs scénarios de simulation ainsi que de mesures expérimentales, montrent que la CTI construite est pertinente et robuste. Elle est ainsi validée pour les deux systèmes radar

Contribution à l’étude des Systèmes Multi-Antennes pour les Télécommunications et les Radars

Habilitation à diriger des recherchesEtude des Systèmes Multi-Antennes pour les Télécommunications et les RadarsCe mémoire résume un peu plus de 10 années de recherche, depuis ma thèse (soutenue en décembre 2002), jusqu’à aujourd’hui au département OSA (Ondes et Systèmes Associés) du Laboratoire XLIM à l’université de Limoges, où je suis maître de conférences depuis septembre 2005.Mes activités de recherche s’intégraient initialement dans le domaine de l’électromagnétisme et des antennes (antennes multifonctions intégrées, réseaux d’antennes pour la formation de faisceau ou pour des applications de goniométrie) avec une connotation plus poussée sur les antennes miniatures. Par la suite, ce dernier axe de recherche s’est naturellement orienté vers l’étude des systèmes multi-antennes (MIMO), permettant notamment de lutter contre les évanouissements du canal radio, qui représentait un challenge important en terme d’intégration au sein d’un terminal mobile par exemple. Cependant, pour être pleinement couvert, ce domaine d’études nécessite de prendre en considération, non seulement les antennes, mais aussi le canal de propagation multitrajets, la mise en forme et les traitements numériques des signaux associés au système multi-antennes. C’est dans ce sens qu’une nouvelle équipe de recherche (« réseaux sans fil ») a été créée au sein du département OSA d’XLIM, et dont je suis responsable depuis 2006. Les axes de recherche abordés concernent donc de manière générale le vaste domaine des systèmes de transmissions multi-antennes pour les communications et les radars, ainsi que le sondage de canal. Ils s’appuient sur une forte partie expérimentale par la mise en œuvre de bancs de mesures permettant la caractérisation active d’algorithmes liés aux traitements multi-antennes (codages MIMO, formation de faisceau, imagerie radar, …), en environnement maîtrisé (chambre réverbérante à brassage de mode, chambre anéchoïde multicapteurs) et en environnement réel