Wireless Monitoring of Respiration and Heart Rates Using Software-Defined-Radio

This paper proposes a Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) platform based wireless system to detect chest movement due to respiration and heartbeats and then estimate the respiration and heartbeat rates. The results are compared with a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) based setup. Using directional antennas, the wireless measurements were taken at varying distances between the person's chest and the antennas, ranging from 20 to 75 cm. Through wall monitoring was also considered. The rate information was extracted from the amplitude and the phase of the received signal. The heart rate estimation for the two setups was crossed checked with the rates obtained using invasive techniques. The minimum accuracy, for the magnitude measurements, was around 86% and 87% based on the SDR and the VNA, respectively.