Short-Time Remote Heart Rate Measurement Based on mmWave FMCW Radar Frame Structure

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 22; no. 6; pp. 1301 - 1305
• Main Authors: Jung, Daeun, Cheon, Sungpil, Kim, Dongryul, Yoon, Joonseok, Kim, Byungkwan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2023; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Chirp; Continuous radiation; Electrocardiography; Error analysis; Frame structures; Frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW); Heart beat; Heart rate; Millimeter wave communication; Millimeter waves; millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar; Performance evaluation; Radar; radar detection; Radar equipment; Radar measurement; Radar measurements; radar signal processing; Sampling; Signal processing; Time measurement
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2023.3241153

This letter presents a novel method to reduce measurement time for remote heart rate measurement using millimeter-wave frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar. The proposed method is based on the sampling theory and the frame structure of recent FMCW radar systems. The range displacement from heartbeat is measured by 60 GHz FMCW radar with a fixed frame interval, 50 ms. With additional chirp repetition in each frame, the heartbeat signal can be sampled with increased or decreased interval. By adopting three different sampling rates from a single radar measurement, the resolution of heart rate measurement is improved in a short time, 2.5 s. The proposed method is evaluated with a commercial off-the-shelf FMCW radar system and three different human subjects, for no respiration and natural status. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, the heart rate result is compared with electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor and conventional signal processing method. The results show that the proposed method estimates the heart rate with lower error and shorter measurement time.