Cardiorespiratory frequency monitoring using the principal component analysis technique on UWB radar signal

In this paper, Principal Component Analysis technique is applied on the signal measured by an ultra wide-band radar to compute the breath and heart rate of volunteers.Themeasurement set-up is based on an indirect time domain reflectometry technique, using an ultra wide-band antenna in contact with the subject’s thorax, at the heart height, and a vector network analyzer.The Principal Component Analysis is applied on the signal reflected by the thorax and the obtained breath frequencies are compared against measures acquired by a piezoelectric belt, a widely used commercial system for respiratory activity monitoring. Breath frequency results show that the proposed approach is suitable for breath activity monitoring. Moreover, the wearable ultra wide-band radar gives also promising results for heart activity frequency detection.