Use millimeter waves to sense heart rate (2)

Abstract

Nowadays, importance of health technology has been raised for the past decade. Electronic devices are invented to monitor humans' health status and prevent dangerous situation happened from the start. One of important vital signs which can be tracked is the heart rate. Most of the heart rate sensors use light sensors to track the change of blood flow or the density of oxygen in the blood vessels. This project examines a new approach - using millimetre wave for heart rate monitoring. It is an application of doppler effect and getting the heartbeat from the motion of artery at the wrist. The concept is Just like the Chinese medicine practice, placing the fingers on the surface of patients' wrist. A low frequency analysis is designed and implemented to obtain the heartbeat data by suitable demodulation, filtering and amplification. This project examines the background theory, design concept and hardware implementation. By comparing the result with other mainstream heart rate monitoring technique, the project also discusses the feasibility and the limitation of using millimetre wave in heart rate monitoring.