Detection of Vital Signs in Debris Environment using SFCW Radar

The detection of vital signs in complex environments using radar has a wide range of applications, from search and rescue to military purposes. Life detection can be achieved by detecting vital signs such as heartbeat, breathing and movements of hands/arms. Because of the complex nature of the rubble environments, radar data contain clutter and noise that makes it difficult to detect signals with low amplitude levels, especially respiratory movements arised from breathing. This study examines data collected from a breathing human in a complex environment behind an obstacle using Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave (SFCW) radar. Through the application of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), the breathing signal was separated from clutter and noise, and then the noise level was further reduced using Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA). The range Doppler map and the temporal variation of the breathing signal obtained from the processed data are investigated.