Concurrent Respiration Monitoring of Multiple Subjects by Phase-Comparison Monopulse Radar Using Independent Component Analysis (ICA) With JADE Algorithm and Direction of Arrival (DOA)

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 8; pp. 73558 - 73569
• Main Authors: Islam, Shekh M. M., Boric-Lubecke, Olga, Lubekce, Victor M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Antenna arrays; Beam switching; Direction of arrival; direction of arrival (DOA); Direction-of-arrival estimation; Doppler radar; Independent component analysis; joint approximate diagonalization of eigenmatrices (JADE); Meters; Monitoring; Monopulse radar; non-contact measurement; Radar antennas; Radar beams; Radar signatures; Receivers; Respiration; respiration monitoring; Separation; subject separation; vital signs
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2988038

While non-contact monitoring of human respiration has been demonstrated using Doppler radar, the concurrent monitoring of multiple equidistant subjects remains a significant technological challenge. Reported research has so far been limited to maintaining 1-m subject separation, based on the radar antenna beam-width. Proposed here is a hybrid method consisting of an SNR-based intelligent decision algorithm which integrates two different approaches to isolate respiratory signatures of two subjects within the radar beam-width separated by less than 1 meter. Using Independent Component Analysis with the JADE algorithm (ICA-JADE) and Direction of Arrival (DOA), this SNR-based decision algorithm works with an accuracy above 93%. In addition, angular location of each subject is estimated by phase-comparison monopulse and an integrated beam switching capability is demonstrated to optimally extract respiratory information. The proposed method coherently combines two separation methods to overcome multiple-subject monitoring limits which can lead to practical adoption for many respiration monitoring applications.