Remote cardiac monitoring using radar

Recording a patient's vital signs without physical contact is a challenging research problem with applications in medicine, search and rescue, and security. In order to study this problem, an ultra wide band (UWB) pulse radar and a fixed-frequency amplitude based radar were constructed and evaluated. The UWB radar was not reliable and did not produce repeatable results, but the fixed-frequency radar successfully recorded heartbeat signatures from twelve human subjects at a distance of 0.5 - 3 meters. The effects of several variables on the results were analyzed. Two experiments conducted to determine the physiological source of the radar amplitude modulations suggest that the modulation is from chest movement, not electrically induced impedance changes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Burnham, Jonathan S

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael Matranga and Julie E. Greenberg.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/61275

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/61275