Estimating Human Movement Parameters Using a Software Radio-based Radar

Estimating Human Movement Parameters Using a Software Radio-based Radar

Godana, B.
Barroso, A.
Leus, G.J.T.

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Microelectronics

2011-09-15

Radar is an attractive technology for long term monitoring of human movement as it operates remotely, can be placed behind walls and is able to monitor a large area depending on its operating parameters. A radar signal reflected off a moving person carries rich information on his or her activity pattern in the form of a set of Doppler frequency signatures produced by the specific combination of limbs and torso movements. To enable classification and efficient storage and transmission of movement data, unique parameters have to be extracted from the Doppler signatures. Two of the most important human movement parameters for activity identification and classification are the velocity profile and the fundamental cadence frequency of the movement pattern. However, the complicated pattern of limbs and torso movement worsened by multipath propagation in indoor environment poses a challenge for the extraction of these human movement parameters. In this paper, three new approaches for the estimation of human walking velocity profile in indoor environment are proposed and discussed. The first two methods are based on spectrogram estimates whereas the third method is based on phase difference computation. In addition, a method to estimate the fundamental cadence frequency of the gait is suggested and discussed. The accuracy of the methods are evaluated and compared in an indoor experiment using a flexible and low-cost software defined radar platform. The results obtained indicate that the velocity estimation methods are able to estimate the velocity profile of the person’s translational motion with an error of less than 10%. The results also showed that the fundamental cadence is estimated with an error of 7%.

human motion
human gait
velocity profile
cadence frequency
radar
GNU Radio

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4429e8e2-64d8-4ddf-bdff-972e350853ce

IARIA

1942-261x

http://www.iariajournals.org/systems_and_measurements/

International Journal on Advances in Systems and Measurements, 4 (1-2), 2011

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) 2011 The Author(s)
IARIA