Real-time non-contact infant respiratory monitoring using UWB radar

This paper presents a real-time system that can monitor an infant's respiration and detect apnea when it occurs. For infants, bedside monitoring of respiratory signals using noncontact sensors is desirable at the hospital and for in-home care. Traditional approach employs acoustic sensors which can hardly detect infant breathing due to low SNR. In this paper, a novel method is introduced by using ultra-wideband (UWB) radar that obtains breathing signal from an infant's weak chest vibration. Furthermore, advanced signal processing techniques are proposed to monitor the breathing signal and to detect apnea. Since an infant may move in the crib, a location algorithm is applied periodically to track the current location of the infant's chest. An apnea warning is issued when the respiration is absent for a pre-defined period of time.