M‐sequence‐based ultra‐wideband sensor network for vitality monitoring of elders at home

Abstract

The western societies are increasingly faced with the challenges of enabling a self-determined and safe life for a growing number of elderly people. Remote monitoring of vitality is an important tool for health risk mitigation but many of the current methods either deliver only infrequent information or require conscious cooperation of the senior. The authors propose an ultrawideband (UWB) radio sensor network based on M-sequence technology specifically designed for the vitality monitoring of persons living alone. It uses the frequency band in the range from 6 to 8.5 GHz (electronic communications committee (ECC)-band), and provides precise localisation, captures breathing motion during rests, can be used for fall detection and allows the extraction of gait features. The sensor network can be installed in common living spaces. It operates continuously in the background without any user interaction. Vitality monitoring by radar sensors is based on motion detection and tracking. This poses some challenges to radar devices because of the harsh multi-path conditions in apartments. This study discusses these challenges, illustrates how to meet them and gives examples for vitality features which can be extracted from UWB-radar data.

Multiple moving person tracking by UWB sensors: the effect of mutual shielding persons and methods reducing its impacts

“…These properties make the presented UWB sensor attractive for a wide range of security and safety applications, such as rescue [5] and law enforcement missions [6], behind-the-wall target detection and localization [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], surveillance and reconnaissance or sensing through smoke and dust, detection of people trapped after earthquakes or building collapses [15][16][17][18], monitoring of critical infrastructures (reservoirs, power plants, etc.) [2,3], monitoring of elderly or handicapped people within ambient assisted living programs [19] and etc.…”

Simultaneous Life Detection and Localization Using a Wideband Chaotic Signal with an Embedded Tone

“…Since noise signals are featureless and have delta-like autocorrelation functions, random noise radars possess several advantages, such as low probability of detection, low probability of interception, immunity to interference and jamming, and high spectrum efficiency, the last two of which are beneficial for life detection applications. Therefore, some noise or pseudo-noise (PN) life detection radars have been proposed [31,32,33,34]. Sachs et al [31,32] presented a UWB M-sequence radar for rescue operations in post-disaster scenarios, and later proposed a M-sequence-based UWB sensor network for vitality monitoring of elders at home.…”

“…Therefore, some noise or pseudo-noise (PN) life detection radars have been proposed [31,32,33,34]. Sachs et al [31,32] presented a UWB M-sequence radar for rescue operations in post-disaster scenarios, and later proposed a M-sequence-based UWB sensor network for vitality monitoring of elders at home. Xia et al [33] proposed a modulated M-sequence UWB life detection radar, which utilizes pulse compression and a linear average to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and a hybrid sampling technique to improve the sampling resolution.…”

Static Person Detection and Localization Based on their Respiratory Motion Using Various Antenna Types

“…UWB radar can be used in many applications for human surveillance e.g. monitoring of elder people [1], moving person monitoring [2] or human vital signs monitoring [3]. A special attention is given to the moving targets monitoring due to the increasing terrorist threads in the recent years.…”