A Robust mmWave Radar Framework for Accurate People Counting and Motion Classification

People counting and occupancy monitoring play a vital role in applications such as intelligent building management, safety control, and resource optimization in future smart cities. Conventional camera and infrared-based methods often suffer from privacy risks, lighting dependency, and limited robustness in complex indoor environments. In this paper, we present a 60 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar-based occupancy monitoring system that enables accurate and privacy-preserving people counting. The proposed system leverages echo signals processed through Doppler and range spectrogram and analyzed by an enhanced ResNet-50 deep learning model to classify motion states and count individuals. Experimental results collected in a typical indoor environment demonstrate that the system achieves 95.45% accuracy across 6 classes of movements and 98.86% accuracy for people counting (0-3 persons). The method also shows strong adaptability under limited data and robustness to Gaussian blur interference, providing an efficient and reliable solution for intelligent indoor occupancy monitoring.

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Publication Details

Journal
Sensors
Published
2026-02-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s26041289
Primary Topic
Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

A Robust mmWave Radar Framework for Accurate People Counting and Motion Classification

Yue Tian, Adnan Zahid, Wenda Li, Nuobei Zhang et al.
Sensors
Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring
article

A Robust mmWave Radar Framework for Accurate People Counting and Motion Classification

Yue Tian, Adnan Zahid, Wenda Li, Nuobei Zhang, Haoxuan Li
article en

Abstract

People counting and occupancy monitoring play a vital role in applications such as intelligent building management, safety control, and resource optimization in future smart cities. Conventional camera and infrared-based methods often suffer from privacy risks, lighting dependency, and limited robustness in complex indoor environments. In this paper, we present a 60 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar-based occupancy monitoring system that enables accurate and privacy-preserving people counting. The proposed system leverages echo signals processed through Doppler and range spectrogram and analyzed by an enhanced ResNet-50 deep learning model to classify motion states and count individuals. Experimental results collected in a typical indoor environment demonstrate that the system achieves 95.45% accuracy across 6 classes of movements and 98.86% accuracy for people counting (0-3 persons). The method also shows strong adaptability under limited data and robustness to Gaussian blur interference, providing an efficient and reliable solution for intelligent indoor occupancy monitoring.

SensorsVol. 26(4)
Heriot-Watt University (GB), Xiamen University of Technology (CN)
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 55%
Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring
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