A K-Band Radar System for

Remote Cardiorespiratory Monitoring

Ali Kiaghadi, Dogansel Teker, Berkay Enginoglu and Ahmet Oncu
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Bogazici University
Istanbul, Turkey
ahmet.oncu@boun.edu.tr

Abstract—A K-band radar system for detecting and
monitoring cardiorespiratory signals of a human being is
presented. The proposed radar system can be used in hospitals or
homes to monitor the vital conditions of patients or elder people.
If there is an abnormality, the radar system is capable of sending
an alert signal to the remotely located monitoring terminal via
the internet. In this work, the settling time of the analog
baseband signal is optimized. To increase the dynamic range of
the K-band radar, an automatic gain control unit is successfully
designed and implemented. Also, to avoid null points in
measurements, both in-phase and quadrature signals are used in
processing.
Keywords—automatic gain control; Doppler radar; heartbeat;
K-band; remote detection; respiratory movement; vital sign;
wireless data.
I. INTRODUCTION
For several decades, scientists have been seeking methods
to detect vital signs such as respiration rate or heart rate. One
of the most useful approaches is remote sensing, which is
useful in many cases where contact sensors can be harmful for
the body.
This paper presents a system that can remotely detect vital
signs and send them to a microprocessor via wireless network
as illustrated in Fig. 1. The design is mainly based on Doppler
Effect. Received signal has information about the movements
of the chest wall. The system works with a 24 GHz sensor.
This system has some advantages compared with previous
works. Large gain provides larger detection distances with low
error rate. This system can detect vital respiration up to 7
meters distance.
This system has the ability to send the vital signals via
wireless network, which creates many possibilities for
caretakers. Since a network is created between sensor and
another CPU, the data can also be transferred via internet to
larger distances.
Using in-phase and quadrature signals to avoid null-points
problem and an alarm flag informing the caretakers about
abnormalities in vital conditions of the patients are features of
the system. The designed Graphical User Interface (GUI) of
the system is shown in Fig. 2.
II. DESIGN ARCHITECTURE AND MEASUREMENT PRINCIPLE
The simplified block diagram of our design is shown in
Fig. 1. We used a commercially available K-band RF sensor
front-end that operates at 24 GHz. The simplified block
diagram of this sensor is shown in Fig. 3. The baseband output
of the K-band RF sensor front-end is amplified and filtered
between 0.02 and 5 Hz with the designed low settling time
pre-amplifier building block. The filtering frequency margins
are determined according to various patient conditions. For
example, respiration rate for obstructive sleeping apnea
syndrome (OSAS) patients may shrink down to 7 per minute

baseband analog K band radar RF

ADC Time domain Response
signal processing front-end

wireless
transmitter Frequency domain Response

Breathing rate

wireless
Spectrogram
receiver

Start Stop
control and data radar signal
processing monitoring
management

Fig. 1.The simplified block diagram of the radar system Fig. 2. The screenshot of the vital signal monitoring screen

This work is supported by TUBITAK (Scientific and Technical Research

Council of Turkey) under contract 112E170 and Istanbul Development
Agency with the contract number TR10/12/BTK/0005.
 power sin (3)
divider
TX Where represents the noise and stems from static
oscillator objects reflecting the incoming sensor waves. Since both of
antenna
0°/90° these signals are unwanted, they are counted as noise and we
divider try to eliminate them in pre-amplifier stage.
0° 90° In order to find , we need to divide the quadrature
I signal to in-phase signal and then take the unwrapped
ADC arctangent from the result. We did these calculations by using
power microprocessor and obtained the movement. Using this
divider movement data, respiration rate, heart-rate, and near real time
Q RX vital conditions can be acquired.
ADC antenna
(4)
Fig. 3. Sensor block diagram Then this data is recorded in 4 seconds intervals and then
these packages are sent to another microprocessor through a
[4]. To improve the dynamic range of the system, an wireless network via the internet. The User Datagram Protocol
Automatic Gain Control (AGC) unit is designed and added to is chosen for establishing wireless communication between
the radar system. This block contains a Voltage Controlled processors.
Amplifier (VCA), a peak and valley detector, comparator, and
controller as shown in Fig. 4. The analog signal processing III. SIGNAL PROCESSING
stage rejects the DC offset and adjusts the amplitude of the The in-phase and quadrature signals are used to calculate
radar signal such that the analog to digital converter circuit movement signal according to equation 8 in digital domain.
(ADC) converts the radar echo into the digital domain with The result of arctangent is wrapped between -90 and +90
maximum signal to noise ratio. We used a 12 bit ADC that degrees. After unwrapping the result, the relative movement
provides 1.25 millivolt resolution, which is sufficient to detect can be obtained. An example of this process is shown in
heartbeats. Note that all steps before data transmission is done Fig. 5. An issue concerning this process is the fact that we are
for both in-phase and quadrature signals. dividing two signals which are swinging around zero. Since
The displacement measurement procedure is explained in both of them have noise and leftover DC part, when
the previous works [5, 6]. Assuming that the normal border of denominator reaches zero, the result can be wrong. At these
the sensor surface plane is perpendicular to the chest wall, the points, we look at the previous trends in movement signal and
distance from the sensor can be calculated as explained in predict the correct data.
equations 1-4: The monitoring terminal receives and processes the
(1) incoming movement signal as well as generating control
signals to manage data communication procedure. After
The sensor generates in-phase and quadrature signals which processing, the monitoring terminal visualizes the vital signs
contain the data in their phase: of the person coming from the radar terminal. This process
continues until the stop button is pressed.
cos (2)
We can calculate respiration and heart rate from two
And for quadrature signal we have:

In-phase Quadrature
Obtained relative movement Voltage*10

in pre- out
VGA
amplifier
control block

peak and
control valley
signal detector

controller comparator
reference
generator
Time (s)
Fig. 5. Converting in-phase and quadrature signals
Fig. 4. Baseband analog signal processing circuit block diagram
 2 0.2 Heart beat
Obtained relative movement

upper
threshold 0

Amplitude (V)
1
PE NE PE NE PE NE PE NE PE -0.2
0 0.2
Respiration
0
-1 lower
threshold -0.2
NE: negative edge
-2 2 respirations 248 250 252 254 256
PE: positive edge
Time (s)
0 5 10 15
time (s) Fig.8. Reference Measurement for 0.5 meters distance

Fig.6. Calculating the breathing rate IV. MEASUREMENT RESULT

different sources. One of them is to use transient analysis to
obtain required parameters and the other one is to use the
obtained spectrum and find the center frequency for each
phenomena.
The time domain analysis is used to calculate breathing
rate. Since respiration is the dominant signal, it is more reliable
to use time domain for this purpose. Figure 6 shows the
illustration how the respiration rate is calculated. There is a
higher threshold and a lower threshold defined and the system
senses the signal transition from these thresholds. Using this
method, system detects positive and negative edges and in each
8 seconds period, according to these edges, system obtains the
number of breathing and divides it by the time it took for those
breathings to happen. Then by multiplying this result by 60,
respiration rate per minute is calculated.
Heart rate is obtained by finding the strongest frequency in
range of 0.8 to 3 Hz from spectrum and multiplying the found
frequency by 60. After passing from analog and digital
processing units, in the spectrum, peaks representing breathing
and its harmonics and heartbeat are clearly visible. The system
works near real time and has an emergency signal that goes off
when there is an abnormality in breathing or heartbeat.
Graphical User Interface (GUI) contains graphs representing in
the time domain, in the frequency domain and spectrogram of
the life signals.
To verify the functionality of our radar system, the
measurement setup shown in Fig. 7 is realized and several
measurements are done. The results show 100 percent
accuracy for respiration and more than 97 percent accuracy for
heart rate at short distances up to 1.5 meters. Due to the
designed high dynamic range analog signal processing unit,
we are able to observe vital signs up to 7 m distance from the
body. Measurements are done in 0.5, 1.5, and 7 meters
distance from the body with both radar system and reference
measurement system simultaneously and the results altogether
are shown in figures 8 to 13. The proposed K-band radar
system has the ability to measure the cardiorespiratory
behaviors from 4 sides of the body. The vital signs can also be
detected from a body behind glass or wooden objects. While
this device can be used for seated patients; however, the best
results are obtained if the patient is sleeping and the sensor is
placed at a distance on top of the person.
Reference signal for heart rate is obtained from ECG and
for breathing, we used a respiratory transducer belt, both
connected to MP30B-CE, from Biopac Systems Company.
As it is shown in the figures, breathing detection has no
error, obviously for a patient with no extra movements, while
heart rate has errors stemmed from the fact that the heartbeat
creates very weak motions on body surface where there are
Amplitude Relative Movement

Transient response
custom designed 24 GHz non-contact
cardiorespiratory measurement system

Time (s)
Frequency Response

computer

Frequency (Hz)
Spectrogram
Frequency (Hz)

conventional
tight strap for measurement
conventional system system Time (s)

Fig. 7. Measurement setup Fig.9. Radar system measurement for 0.5 meters distance
 0.2 0.2 Heart beat
Heart beat

0 0
Amplitude (V)

Amplitude (V)
-0.2 -0.2
0.2 Respiration 0.2 Respiration
0 0

-0.2 -0.2
232 234 236 238 240 120 122 124 126 128
Time (s)
Time (s)
Fig.12. Reference measurement for 7 meters distance
Fig.10. Reference measurement for 1.5 meters distance
data to a remote terminal via the internet enables us to monitor
many different unwanted motions with various sources.
the health condition of the people, remotely. As a result of
Results and reference measured data show 3 percent error designing the AGC unit in the circuit, system can be used
for 0.5 meters, 0.8 percent for 1.5 meters, and 31 percent for 7 regardless of its distance with the patient’s body, up to 7
meters distance for heart rate. The results are presented in meters. Spectrogram enables us to monitor changes in
Table 1. This table shows the average of the heart beat and the respiration rate in long terms, which is useful for patients with
number of breathing for 2 to 4 minutes of measurement. respiration disorder.
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Remote Radar System Reference Signal
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Radio for Doppler Radar Sensing of Vital Signs,” Microwave
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Amplitude Relative Movement

Transient response
Amplitude Relative Movement

Transient response

Time (s) Time (s)

Frequency Response Frequency Response

Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

Spectrogram Spectrogram
Frequency (Hz)

Frequency (Hz)

Time (s) Time (s)

Fig.11. Radar system measurement for 1.5 meters distance Fig.13. Radar system measurement for 7 meters distance