Micro-radar wearable respiration monitor

Respiration is a vital activity for proper body functioning. Monitoring respiration not only aids in assessing our health but also helps in anticipating obstructive disorders such as sleep apnea and asthma. Typical systems for monitoring respiration such as nasal masks and chest band are cramped on a user's body. These are wired and require a user to be stationary when measurements are taken. Wireless wearable devices for breathing rate estimation are straps around the chest that hinder chest wall movement due to tensile limitations. To mitigate these challenges, in this paper we present a wireless system for continuous monitoring of breathing using a wearable micro radar. The radar measures the movement of the chest wall. We design a signal processing algorithm for noise cancellation and breathing rate determination. Using an evaluation on ten human subjects, we show that our system can measure breathing rate continuously with an accuracy of 95%.