A Heart Rate Extraction Method Using Millimeter Wave Radar

With the development and commercialization of radar technology, real-time monitoring of human heart rate in a resting state using Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar is of great significance for assessing human health. This paper addresses the issue of interference in heartbeat signals caused by environmental noise, respiration signals, and their harmonics in radar signals. A heart rate extraction method based on the combined processing of Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) and Empirical Wavelet Transform (EWT) is proposed. The method involves using SSA on the preprocessed signal to obtain the main components and eliminate noise peaks near the heartbeat, followed by using EWT to decompose the signal into several components. The heartbeat signal is reconstructed by selecting components within a specific frequency range and correlating them with vital sign characteristics. Experimental findings reveal that the method achieves an average relative error of 2.76% for heart rate estimation over a 5-second window.