Breath detection of humans buried in a homogeneous lossy medium: A simplified analytical model

The aim of this work is to highlight the paramount importance of the availability of an electromagnetic model for the design of system based on electromagnetic radiation for search and rescue operation of humans buried under different materials as debris, and snowslide. In this contribution the monitoring of the breathing activity of a man buried into a homogeneous lossy medium has been analyzed. The geometry of the scenario and the body have been simplified in order to model the electromagnetic problem of the interaction of the body and impinging field in a closed-form. In spite of the simple formulation the results are satisfactory and show how some a priori important system requirements can be obtained, as for example the most suitable working frequency range. The model is able to predict the sensitiveness in terms of phase and module variations depending on the scenario.