Abstract
In this thesis, we use an ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse radar system for non-contact vital sign detection like respiration rate and heartbeat rate. The system can be applied for wireless healthcare monitoring or searching trapped victim. The transmitter sends periodic pulses at 10M pulses/sec towards the person. The pulse duration of transmitted pulse is about nano seconds. The pulses are sent to the chest of the person, and are reflected back to the receiver. The respiration and heartbeat information are carried in the reflected signal. The equivalent sampling rate of receiver is 130G samples/sec. It has been a long time for using sine wave to simulate respiration and heartbeat in wireless detection. Respiration is like sine wave, but heartbeat is like pulse. We design a mathematical heartbeat model which refers to real heartbeat from electrocardiogram (ECG). We develop a successive interference cancellation algorithm that can use the reflected signals efficiently and estimate respiration rate and heartbeat rate precisely. Moreover, we don’t need any prior knowledge of the transmitted pulse waveform. That is, proposed algorithm is a blind-estimated algorithm. The performance and comparison are presented in simulation results. We also implement a real-time platform to control and estimate respiration rate and heartbeat rate.