Optimized Hardware Architecture for Respiration Rate Classification using Quadratic SVM and mmWave Radar Sensor

In this paper, we propose an FPGA based system for non-contact monitoring of respiration rates (RR) using a mmWave frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar. The novel FPGA based hardware architecture presented in this paper classifies normal and abnormal RR with a Support Vector Machine (SVM) model using mmWave radar-based sensing. SVM with various kernels are evaluated in order to identify the most effective approach for respiratory rate (RR) classification. SVM with a quadratic polynomial kernel shows a high classification accuracy of 95%. While the accuracy was comparable to other kernels, the quadratic polynomial kernel achieved a substantial reduction in the number of support vectors and other parameters. This optimisation results in lower resource utilisation and power consumption, making it highly efficient for FPGA implementation.