Noise considerations for vital signs CW radar sensors

The use of continuous wave (CW) radars for measuring human vital signs have recently received a lot of attention due to its many promising applications like monitoring people at hospitals or infants at home without the need for wired sensors. This paper briefly presents the typical CW radar setup and the underlying signal theory for such sensors. Then to point out and especially clarify one of the most important effects aiding the design of vital signs radars (VSR), a more detailed discussion concerning phase noise cancellation (or filtering) by range correlation is given. This discussion leads to some general conclusions about which system components are the most critical concerning noise contribution and thus detection accuracy and dynamic range.