Through-the-Wall Radar Life Detection and Monitoring

Victor M. Lubecke, Olga Boric-Lubecke, Anders Host-Madsen, and Aly E. Fathy*,

University of Hawaii, Electrical Engineering Dept., Honolulu, HI 96822, USA

*

University of Tennessee, Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept., Knoxville, TN 37996

which they absorb incident signals and manner in which they
scatter the signal.
Early efforts in Doppler radar were directed at assisting with
law enforcement and disaster rescue by sensing the motion of
a subject attempting to hide, or buried under rubble [1].
Ideally, respiration and even heart-beat related motion are of
interest as they cannot be fully suppressed. In such
applications, discerning the subject's motion of interest from
extraneous motion and stationary clutter is a significant
challenge, as is the isolation of multiple subjects [2,3]. With
the advent of practical high speed sampling and fast pulse
generation technology, UWB radar has become attractive for
low power through-wall personnel motion sensing, with a
particular interest in constructing a real-time image [4]. This
technology is also hampered by clutter and motion isolation
issues, as well as persistent wide band hardware challenges.
Wall loss, hardware, regulations, and probability of detection
also affect transmit power levels, frequencies, and modulation
choices, ultimately limiting the effectiveness of any radar.
To meet these challenges, cuffent Doppler and UWB STTW
radar research includes complex propagation channel
modeling based on real-world urban environment expectations
and multiple wall scenarios, advanced algorithms for real-time
vital signs detection and high resolution imaging algorithms,
antenna arrays and multiple receivers for increased resolution
and estimation accuracy, passive exploitation of
environmental signals, and compact radio integration
technology. Both a description of fundamental concepts and
examples of current research in UWB radar for imaging,
Doppler radar for life-signs isolation and detection, and
multistatic radar techniques for passive personnel detection
are presented in the following sections.

Abstract - Technology that can be used to unobtrusively

detect and monitor the presence of human subjects from a
distance and through barriers can be a powerful tool for law
enforcement, military, and health monitoring applications. To
this end, ultra-wide band radar has shown promise for real-time
subject imaging, and compact Doppler radar solutions have
demonstrated potential for providing non-invasive detection and
monitoring of cardiopulmonary activity for multiple subjects.
These technologies work through walls and other obstructions,
and can even leverage the presence of ambient radio signals to
provide a covert means to detect, isolate, and physiologically
monitor multiple human subjects from a remote position.
Practical applications ranging from counter-terrorism to health
monitoring require systems that are accurate, affordable, and
easy to use. Current research efforts addressing these challenges
through radio, signal processing, and sensor networking will be
presented.
Index Terms - Through wall, STTW, UWB, Doppler, life
signs, passive radar.

I. INTRODUCTION

As our nation is confronted with new security challenges,

including asymmetric battlefield threats abroad and defense
infrastructure needs back home, enhanced battle-space
awareness and effective warfighter protection are essential.
Expeditionary warfighters are commonly faced with unknown
enemy threats from behind opaque barriers, for which extreme
precautionary measures must be encumbered to minimize risk.
Borders and perimeters must also be secured with minimum
burden to personnel and maximum likelihood for detecting
any intrusion. Battlefield search & rescue and triage
assessments must also be conducted in a manner that
minimizes the chance of increased losses. Technology that can
be used to unobtrusively detect and monitor the presence of
human subjects from a distance and through barriers can be a
powerful tool for meeting these challenges.
Both basic Doppler and ultra-wide band (UWB) radar have
been investigated for see-through-the-wall (STTW)
applications, for their particular barrier penetration advantages
in short range detection and localization. While other
technologies like millimeter-wave and infra-red imaging have
demonstrated good resolution through clothing and packaging,
barriers in STTW applications generally involve higher
density materials like reinforced concrete, concrete blocks,
sheetrock, brick, wood, plastic, tile, and fiberglass. These
materials prove problematic as barriers both in the degree to

1-4244-0688-9/07/$20.00 C 2007 IEEE

II. ULTRA-WIDE BAND IMAGING RADAR

UWB radar is based on the comparison of echoes from short

duration pulse transmissions to detect small changes over time
resulting from target motion. In the simplest sense, the time
signatures (impulse response) of successive echoes from a
room containing a moving target would be identical, except at
the point in time associated with the signal returning from the
position of the moving target. Thus, differencing successive
signatures would produce an output that corresponded only to
the moving objects presence and range. The primary

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advantages of UWB for short-range radar imaging include

extremely fine range resolution (theoretically sub-centimeter
resolution), high power efficiency because of low transmit
duty cycle, potential for low probability of detection and low
interference to legacy systems, and ability to detect moving or
stationary targets. Security oriented products of this type like
Radar Vison by Time Domian are already available in the
form of a briefcase sized system that can be held against a
wall or tripod mounted [5].
The long term goal of military field imaging technology is
the rapid detection of enemies' maneuvering; through
acquiring relatively high-resolution images using advanced
multidimensional image processing, pattern recognition
techniques, and fast data processing. An example block
diagram of such a radar system, developed at the University of
Tennessee, is shown in Fig. 1. The system consists of an RF
T/R board, UWB antennas, a digital timing and control board,
and an imaging processing software module [6].
Capturing the data is the most challenging task for a system
with a 1 GHz bandwidth, as Nyquist's sampling theorem
requires a sampling rate of over 2 GS/s. In order to resolve
distances on the order of one centimeter, rates exceeding 10
GS/s are required. Individual components at these rates are
either not yet offered or very expensive. Hence, a fieldprogrammable gate-arrays (FPGA)-based system was
developed here, to implement a hybrid sampling scheme using
real-time and equivalent-time sampling techniques. Where, for
a 10 MHz radar pulse repetition rate, the waveform is
digitized at a 100 MHz rate. 10 samples are taken during each
cycle, and then a 200 ps delay is placed on the ADC triggering
signal for the next 10 samples. The total time to collect the
data comes out to 100 x 50 ns, i.e. 5 Fts [7]. In general, intense
wideband signal processing would normally require an entire
custom VLSI or an ASIC implementation.
After taking redundancy into account, this system achieves
a 2.4ms/frame rate, with an averaging factor of 8 to improve
S/N ratio. FPGA-based equivalent time sampling and control
network provides a low-cost and high-performance solution
for a practical UWB radar system. For image formation,
algorithms such as back projection methods can be used given

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display for a UWB radar. The time signature peaks in (b) and
white patches in (c) correspond to: A - Antenna coupling, B Reflection from target, C - Reflection from door, D Reflection from sidewall.

that wall effects are considered. A typical experimental

scenario and results are shown in Fig. 2, which is consistent
with results from extensive modeling based on FDTD
algorithms.
III. CONSTANT AND STEPPED FREQUENCY DOPPLER RADAR

There is particular interest in Doppler radar for the detection

of stationary personnel, isolation of individual vital signs, and
the use of signals that are difficult to recognize upon intercept.
Doppler radar transmits a signal toward a target region, and
analyzes phase changes in the echoes indicating target motion.
This motion can be as minute as that caused by heart-beat and
respiration. Transmissions are generally single frequency, and
the degree of phase variation for a given displacement is thus
also proportional to the signal frequency. Doppler radar offers
particular advantages for STTW applications in that the low
instantaneous receiver bandwidth and modest analog to digital
conversion speed requirements leads to promise for creating
compact low-cost handheld systems that would be attractive
for combat personnel. The concept is illustrated in Fig. 3a.
The transmitted RF signal, f( t), can penetrate a wide range of
barrier materials to produce RF echoes from targets in the

Fig. 1. Typical system block diagram for a UWB STTW radar.

770

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modified FFT of the measured signal to determine the presence
of 2, 1, or O subjects (2p, Ip, Op, respectively).
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The signal processing of the MIMO Doppler signals needs

to extract a number of different types of information from the

signals: the number of people present in the range of the

instrument, their position, existence of a dominating line of
sight component, individual heart-beat and respiration signals,
and heart rate (and respiration rate) of individual subjects. A
number of different algorithms have been developed for this
purpose. The most basic problem is to determine if there is
even a heartbeat present. The applications for this are obvious

(b)

Fig. 3. Doppler life signs detection concept (a) and simplified

system block diagram (b)

in search and rescue, but it is also crucial in medical

applications to detect cardiac arrest. The approach is to model
the heartbeat and Doppler signal, and then use a hypothesis
test to determine the presence of this signal; the optimum test
here is to use a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT),
which turns out to result in using a modified FFT of the signal.
In [3] this was extended to multiple subjects, and it was shown
that it is possible to count 2, 1, or 0 subjects. This method can
be extended to multiple subjects, but it works best if there is
little multipath (Fig. 4).
An alternative approach in [11] is to use blind source
separation (BSS). This is applicable in any multipath scenario.
BSS uses characteristics of the heartbeat together with
independence of different people' s heartbeat (statistical
independence of the heart rate variations) to extract signals
with these characteristics. The primary application is to
monitor the vital signs of multiple people, but it can also be
used to determine the number of persons present. In [11] it
was demonstrated that it's possible two separate to respiration
signals, or two heartbeat signals. Once the heartbeat signals
have been separated, the individual heart rates can be
monitored as if JUSt a single person was present. A number of
different methods for heart rate extraction were explored, and
it was determined that in general autocorrelation gives the best
accuracy.

field of view. Echoes from moving targets, f( t+ (t)), possess

distinct phase variations related to target motion, (t),
including that from human respiration and heart activity,
which can be isolated and reported to the user. The radar unit
can contain one or more receivers, as needed to improve echo
analysis [8, 9].
Frequency stepping can also provide a means for accurate
ranging without adding significant hardware complexity. One
such system known as "Radar Scope," developed by DARPA,
is expected to be fielded to troops in Iraq as soon as this
spring. When placed against a foot-thick concrete wall, the
handheld battery operated system will give warfighters the
capability to sense through it and 50 feet into the room
beyond. The unit will reportedly sense within seconds, the
presence of even stationary subjects based on motion
associated with their breathing [10].
There is of course, significant interest in moving beyond
basic motion detection, and building systems that can mitigate
clutter and isolate specific motion of interest, including the
heart-beat associated motion of multiple subjects. This is
particularly important in handheld systems used at some
distance from a wall, which is subject to detecting personnel
on both sides including the radar operator. Multiple antenna
systems utilizing advanced space-time processing known as
MIMO have shown promise toward this end. A simplified
block diagram for one such system, developed at the
University of Hawaii, is illustrated in Fig. 3b.

771

Ret.,_ ,

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

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The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance and support

of B.K. Park, and Y. Yang.

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REFERENCES
[1] K.M. Chen, D. Mirsa, H. Wang, H.R. Chuang, and E. Postow,
"An X-band microwave life detection system," IEEE Trans.
Biomed. Eng., vol. 33, pp. 697-70, 1986

echo

(a)
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Raadar

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a.;

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0.3 0

.
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NJode

Time,

[2] V.M. Lubecke, 0. Boric-Lubecke, G. Awater, P.-W. Ong, P.L.

Gammel, R.-H. Yan, and J.C. Lin, "Remote sensing of vital
signs with telecommunications signals," World Congr. on
Medical Physics and Biomed. Engineering, Chicago, IL, 2000.

Shaking ,Left/Riaht

[3] Q. Zhou, J. Liu, A. Host-Madsen, 0. Boric-Lubecke, and V.

Lubecke, "Detection of Multiple Heartbeats Using Doppler
Radar," IEEE ICASSP '06, Toulouse, France, v. 2, pp. 1160 1163, May 2006.

[4] P. Withington, H. Fluhler, and S. Nag, "Enhancing homeland

security with advanced UWB sensors," Microwave Magazine,
IEEE, vol. 4, no. 3, pp.51 - 58, 2003

30

(b)
Fig. 5. Concept (a) and performance (b) for multistatic Node
based STTW radar. Such a system can exploit ambient wireless
signals for life-signs detection, and offer greatly enhanced
immunity to interference from transmitter shake.

[5] Website: http://www.timedomain.com/ (Radar Vision)

[6] Y. Yang and A.E. Fathy, "See-through-wall imaging using ultra
wideband short-pulse radar system," IEEE Antennas and
Propagation Soc. Intl. Symp. v. 3B, pp. 334 - 337, July 2005
[7] Y. Yang, S. Liu, J. Wang, A.E. Fathy, "FPGA-Based Data
Acquisition and Beamforming System for UWB See-ThroughWall Imaging Radar," IEEE AP-S Intl. Symp. on Antennas and
Propagation and USNC/URSI Nat. Radio Sci. Meeting, 2006.

IV.MULTISTATIC AND PASSIVE RADAR

Beyond the Doppler systems described, separate receive

units, or "Nodes," can be scattered in the target vicinity to
further enhance a Doppler STTW radar system, providing
additional information on RF echoes, and also negating
unintended user motion as the direct and echo signals they
compare would have a roughly equal and canceling source
motion contributions [12,13]. Such a system can be deployed
for passive unmanned sensing, exploiting transmissions in the
vicinity like those from wireless telephones. This is illustrated
in Fig. 5. In such a system, the scattered nodes can form a
cooperative ad-hoc network, comparing the telephone signal
with its target echoes and reporting to a local transceiver. The
transceiver then reports to a remote monitoring site for
command and control interpretation and decisions.

[8] A. Droitcour, 0. Boric-Lubecke, V. Lubecke, J. Lin, G. Kovacs,

"Range Correlation and I/Q performance benefits in single chip
silicon Doppler radars for non-contact cardiopulmonary signs
sensing," IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., Vol. 52, No. 3,
pp. 838-848, March 2004.
[9] B. K. Park, 0. Boric-Lubecke, and V. Lubecke, "Arctangent
Demodulation in Quadrature Doppler Radar Receiver System
with DC Offset Compensation," accepted for IEEE Trans. on
Microwave Theory Tech., 2007.
[10] Website: http://www.gizmag.com/go/5032/ (Radar Scope)
[11] N. Petrochilos, M. Reznik, A. H0st-Madsen, V. Lubecke, and
0. Boric-Lubecke, "Blind separation of Human Heartbeats and
Respiration by the use of a Doppler Radar Remote Sensing,"
accepted for ICASSP'07, Honolulu, HI, April 2007.

VII. Conclusion

[12] I. Mostafanezhad, B.-K. Park, V. Lubecke, and 0. BoricLubecke, "Performance and Limitations for Radar Sensor
Networks," IEEE MTT-S Intl. Microwave Symp., Honolulu, HI,
June 2007.

Both UWB and CW/stepped frequency Doppler radar have

shown effectiveness detecting human presence in STTW
applications, with complementary advantages in performance
and form. Future systems seek to merge the advantages of
both, and go beyond to isolate subjects, map structures, and
exploit signals of opportunity.

[13] V.M. Lubecke, 0. Boric-Lubecke, and E. Beck, "A Compact

Low-Cost Add-On Module for Doppler Radar Sensing of Vital
Signs Using a Wireless Communications Terminal," IEEE MTTS Intl. Microwave Symp., Seattle, WA, June 2002.

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