Noncontact Seismocardiogram Signal Detection Using Microwave Doppler Radar

Abstract

The objective of the research is to achieve non-contact detection of seismocardiogram (SCG), a representation of mechanical heart motion, using microwave Doppler radar system. The increase in demand for health monitoring requires robust, reliable, and accurate remote detection of cardiac signals. Due to its ability to penetrate non-metal obstacles, microwave Doppler radar is promising to provide a non-contact and unobtrusive measurement. In this dissertation, both the hardware system and the signal processing approaches are developed for providing an accurate and reliable measurement of cardiac signals using the microwave Doppler radar. First, a noise suppression scheme and a clutter removal strategy are investigated to improve the performance of a microwave Doppler radar system. Then, an investigation is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a radar signal to represent SCG, and a standalone method is developed to extract the SCG features from the radar signal without using a contact electrocardiogram (ECG) signal that the conventional methods rely on. With the development of the hardware system and signal processing approaches, the complete non-contact measurement and analysis of cardiac signals can be achieved.Ph.D