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.