Design of Body-Worn Radar-Based Sensors for Vital Sign Monitoring

In this chapter, we look into the design of a wearable vital sign sensor for future cooperative, energy-efficient body area networks. An ideal solution is to implement a body-worn sensing system that does not require any contact to the user. One’s vital health parameters could be continuously monitored and wireless transmission of these data could allow remote signal analysis. The human chest is modeled as a planar multilayered medium with one-dimensional inhomogeneity, where the electromagnetic property is piecewise constant in each layer. Subsequently, a multiray propagation model is proposed to take into account significant multipath components contributed to the received signal including the line-of-sight component, and the transmitted signals reflected off the air/skin/fat/muscle interfaces. Subsequently, we perform simulation studies to validate the derived model and to analyze the system performance.