Radar Assistive System for People with Neurodegenerative Disorders Through Head Motion and Eyes Blinking Detection

Reliable Eye-Blinking Detection With Millimeter-Wave Radar Glasses

“…Indeed, although the target is mostly a paralyzed subject, the effect of the random body motion cannot be neglected and great care should be taken because an additional target movement can easily overcome the tiny eye-blinking extent, thus making the detection very challenging. One of the main aspects to be considered concerns the head motions resulting from the subject's physiological activity [26]. To this purpose, the respiratory activity of a subject can be divided into two categories: diaphragmatic and costal breathing.…”

“…In this case, the intercostal muscle relaxation makes the air leaving the lungs and the head moves as a consequence of the intercostal muscle movements. As investigated in [26], the effect of costal breathing seriously affects the measurement. In many cases, the eye-blinking detection by means of the displacement analysis becomes impossible.…”

“…Moreover, radar systems are very robust and reliable against ambient light conditions, which is a distinctive feature if compared with the optical systems [16]. A limited number of examples are available within the scientific literature, whereby radars are employed to recognize eye blinking and head movements [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]. A context of interest for such a kind of detections concerns the automotive industry, where the head motion and the eye-blinking detection are often exploited to recognize inattentive driver behaviors [20], [21].…”

“…It is worth noting that this is an extended version of [26], which was presented at the 2023 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium. In this regard, the present contribution extends the conference paper with broader literature study, deeper theoretical description and simulation of the scenario, the higher working frequency of the employed radar involving advantages in terms of decreased size and better integration, the crucial integration on glass frame to suppress the random body motion, the experimental activity taking into account also the presence of random body motion due to the subject activity and external factors, and the performance analysis for different radar positions.…”

Beneficial Effects of Self-Motion for the Continuous Phase Analysis of Ac-Coupled Doppler Radars

“…Most microwave Doppler radars exploit a homodyne architecture with the task of measuring the target phase history and to obtain information concerning the related target displacement [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Although direct conversion receivers have demonstrated their effectiveness and reduced phase noise, their performance is seriously affected by the everpresent dc offset in the baseband section.…”