The measurement, monitoring of heartbeat and its rate are necessary to know the health of the heart of human beings. In addition, they are needed for extended applications like criminal investigation, law enforcement, defense and military usage, search, rescue operation, etc. The ultra-wideband (UWB) radars found growing interest in recent years as they are able to overcome the limitations of continuous-wave (CW) Doppler radars in detecting human heartbeat. Modeling and analysis of the UWB pulse propagation behavior through a human body is important before developing a practical UWB radar. Several researchers have estimated the reflected signals to study if their variations correlate with the heartbeat rate. However, the reflected signal strength carrying Doppler information received at the radar after a two-way propagation of the RF signal was found to be too weak for detection. This paper presents (i) a model for UWB wave propagation through a human thorax and (ii) estimation via simulation, of transmission coefficient at various frequencies in the UWB range 1–10[Formula: see text]GHz using CST Microwave Studio. The study clearly indicates that the variation of power transmission coefficient of UWB signal has a strong correlation to the instantaneous dimension of the heart in a cardiac cycle, a feature that can be exploited in detecting cardiac activity of human being using radar-based principles.
Ultra-wideband electromagnetic pulse propagation in a homogeneous, cold plasma