A Twin Spiral Planar Antenna for UWB Medical Radars

A planar-spiral antenna to be used in an ultrawideband (UWB) radar system for heart activity monitoring is presented. The antenna, named “twin,” is constituted by two spiral dipoles in a compact structure. The reflection coefficient at the feed point of the dipoles is lower than −8 dB over the 3–12 GHz band, while the two-dipoles coupling is about −20 dB. The radiated beam is perpendicular to the plane of the spiral, so the antenna is wearable and it may be an optimal radiator for a medical UWB radar for heart rate detection. The designed antenna has been also used to check some hypotheses about the UWB radar heart activity detection mechanism. The radiation impedance variation, caused by the thorax vibrations associated with heart activity, seems to be the most likely explanation of the UWB radar operation

Microwave Imaging for Early Breast Cancer Detection

We overview the research trend on microwave imaging for early breast cancer detection. The technologies have two categories: ultra-wide band (UWB) radar that reconstructs the scattering power distribution in the breast and inverse scattering problem that reconstructs the dielectric properties distribution. We have developed a clinical equipment using UWB radar and carried out clinical test 4 years ago. Through the experiments, we concluded that the UWB radar was insufficient for the clinical equipment, because the UWB radar cannot discriminate cancerous tumor and other lesions. Therefore, we have been studying inverse scattering. It is a challenging task to develop an equipment using inverse scattering technologies. We have proposed a microwave mammography that has four features: (1) sensor with breast fixing by absorption, (2) small sensor with multipolarization, (3) image reconstruction program linking the commercial EM simulator, and (4) hybrid imaging method using UWB radar and inverse scattering

Self-adjustable domain adaptation in personalized ECG monitoring integrated with IR-UWB radar

To enhance electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring systems in personalized detections, deep neural networks (DNNs) are applied to overcome individual differences by periodical retraining. As introduced previously [4], DNNs relieve individual differences by fusing ECG with impulse radio ultra-wide band (IR-UWB) radar. However, such DNN-based ECG monitoring system tends to overfit into personal small datasets and is difficult to generalize to newly collected unlabeled data. This paper proposes a self-adjustable domain adaptation (SADA) strategy to prevent from overfitting and exploit unlabeled data. Firstly, this paper enlarges the database of ECG and radar data with actual records acquired from 28 testers and expanded by the data augmentation. Secondly, to utilize unlabeled data, SADA combines self organizing maps with the transfer learning in predicting labels. Thirdly, SADA integrates the one-class classification with domain adaptation algorithms to reduce overfitting. Based on our enlarged database and standard databases, a large dataset of 73200 records and a small one of 1849 records are built up to verify our proposal. Results show SADA\u27s effectiveness in predicting labels and increments in the sensitivity of DNNs by 14.4% compared with existing domain adaptation algorithms

IR-UWB Radar Sensor for Fine Human Motion Detection

Fine human motion detection in contact-less manner based on radar technology is increasingly appealing research efforts among researchers and one of the promising approach that have garnered research momentum in recent years is IR-UWB radar. IR-UWB radar is a kind of radar sensor that was developed from combining UWB and radar technology. Being a technology that offers unique capability of penetrability, high temporal resolution, low power consumption and emits non-ionizing electromagnetic waves, IR-UWB radar sensor is an encouraging fusion of radar and UWB technology that can be leveraged into many useful extensive number of application. In this paper, a preliminary study of detecting fine human motion using IR-UWB radar sensor is presented where a system model based on the IR-UWB radar sensor operation on fine human motion detection is described. For testing, this work employs a right hand and fingers. Based on the tests, the movement of right hand and fingers can be discriminated accurately at a distance of between 5cm to 10cm with minor occurrence of noises

Three-Dimensional Imaging Method Incorporating Range Points Migration and Doppler Velocity Estimation for UWB Millimeter-Wave Radar

High-resolution, short-range sensors that can be applied in optically challenging environments (e.g., in the presence of clouds, fog, and/or dark smog) are in high demand. Ultrawideband (UWB) millimeter-wave radars are one of the most promising devices for the above-mentioned applications. For target recognition using sensors, it is necessary to convert observational data into full 3-D images with both time efficiency and high accuracy. For such conversion algorithm, we have already proposed the range points migration (RPM) method. However, in the existence of multiple separated objects, this method suffers from inaccuracy and high computational cost due to dealing with many observed RPs. To address this issue, this letter introduces Doppler-based RPs clustering into the RPM method. The results from numerical simulations, assuming 140-GHz band millimeter radars, show that the addition of Doppler velocity into the RPM method results in more accurate 3-D images with reducing computational costs

Acceleration of Range Points Migration-Based Microwave Imaging for Nondestructive Testing

We report on an experimental investigation of the properties of volume holographic recording in photopolymerizable nanoparticle?polymer composites (NPCs) doped with chain transferring multifunctional di- and tri-thiols as chain transfer agents. It is shown that the incorporation of the multifunctional thiols into NPCs more strongly influences on volume holographic recording than that doped with mono-thiol since more chemical reactions involve in the polymer network formation. It is found that, as similar to the case of mono-thiol doping, there exist optimum concentrations of di- and tri-thiols for maximizing the saturated refractive index modulation. It is also seen that recording sensitivity monotonically decreases with an increase in multifunctional thiol concentration due to the partial inhibition of the photopolymerization event by excessive thiols

Low Complexity Algorithm for Range-Point Migration-Based Human Body Imaging for Multistatic UWB Radars

High-resolution, short-range sensors that can be applied in optically challenging environments (e.g., in the presence of clouds, fog, and/or dark smog) are in high demand for various applications. Ultrawideband radar is a promising sensor that is suitable for short-range surveillance or watching sensors. Range-point migration (RPM) has been recently established as a promising imaging approach to achieve accurate and real-time 3-D imaging. However, when objects with many scattering points are dealt with, such as a human body, RPM suffers from high computational costs. In this letter, we propose an algorithm with a lower complexity for an RPM-based 3-D imaging method by introducing a sampling-based scattering center extraction with a simplified evaluation function, in which an efficient sample pattern is provided by a golden ratio. The results from a finite-difference time-domain-based numerical test, which introduces a realistic human body object, demonstrate that our proposed method remarkably reduces the computational cost without sacrificing the reconstruction accuracy