Selecting Target Range with Accurate Vital Sign Using Spatial Phase Coherency of FMCW Radar

Respiration and heartbeat are basic indicators of the physiological state of human beings. Frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar can sense micro-displacement in the human body surface without contact, and is used for vital-sign (respiration and heartbeat) monitoring. For the extraction of vital-sign, it is essential to select the target range containing vital-sign information. In this paper, we exploit the coherency of phase in different range-bins of FMCW radar to effectively select the range-bins that contain accurate signals for remote monitoring of human respiration and heartbeat. To quantify coherency, the spatial phase coherency (SPC) index is introduced. The experimental results show that the SPC can select a range-bin containing more accurate vital-sign signals than conventional methods. This result demonstrates that the proposed method is accurate for monitoring of vital signs by using FMCW radar.