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.
Authors
- Yue Tian (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2046-6911)
- Adnan Zahid
- Wenda Li
- Nuobei Zhang
- Haoxuan Li
Institutions
- Heriot-Watt University (GB)
- Xiamen University of Technology (CN)
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