Fabry-Perot Beam Scanning Antenna for Remote Vital Sign Detection at 60 GHz

A beam scanning Fabry-Perot leaky-wave antenna (LWA) is designed at 60 GHz-band for single tone continuous-wave Doppler radar (DR)-based remote vital sign monitoring (RVSM) in a dynamic environment. A brief analysis is presented on antenna requirements for the DR in a typical dynamic scenario where a continuous RVSM is desired of a patient during sleep. The antenna is designed based on the drawn requirements with sufficiently high gain (>18 dBi) and wide beam scanning (12°) over the operating frequency band (62-65 GHz) for accurate RVSM up to 3 m distance. The patient under continuous health monitoring has a flexibility to change his/her position within 1 m angular distance from the fixed sensor position. Detailed RVSM measurements have been carried out with the proposed antenna system at 2 m and 3 m distances from the subject to verify the designed antenna's suitability for dynamic RVSM application. It has been shown that both the breathing rate (BR) and heartbeat rate (HR) can be successfully detected within 20° of the angular range by tuning the operating frequency from 62 to 65 GHz.