The ultra-wide band (UWB) radar sensor is useful in the field of mission critical sensors and sensor networks due to its short detection time, high penetration, and low energy consumption. To support critical missions such as search and rescue, this paper designs a non-contact detection system based on a UWB radar sensor module to obtain vital signs of human beings. There are noise and clutter due to non-contact detection, and therefore the coherent background noise removal and moving target display filter are applied. Then, the variational mode decomposition (VMD) algorithm is used to extract heartbeat signals and respiratory signals. In addition, the Hilbert transform is applied to heartbeat signals and respiratory signals to obtain the time-frequency information. The electrocardiogram is also employed to compare the results of the UWB radar sensor. We also detect the human target through-the-wall. It turns out that the system can obtain respiratory and heartbeat characteristics simultaneously in one measurement, saving cost with high accuracy. INDEX TERMS Mission critical sensors, non-contact detection, variational mode decomposition, electrocardiogram, through-the-wall detection. ZHENZHEN DUAN received the B.S. degree from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, in 2016, where she is currently pursuing the M.S. degree with the Department of Information and Communication Engineering. Her research interests include ultra-wideband radar for human detection and clutter suppression. JING LIANG received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 2003 and 2006, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, in 2009. She is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Her current research interests include radar sensor networks, collaborative and distributed signal processing, wireless communications, compressive sensing, wireless networks, and fuzzy logic systems.