Electromagnetic Human Body Modeling with Physiological Motion for Radar Applications

Radar has the potential to be used for both therapeutic and diagnostic medical applications, such as vital sign detection. To date, the focus of research in radar medical applications has been predominantly in algorithm development. Improved performance may, however, be achieved through the optimal selection of radar system parameters. In this paper, we present the implementation and validation of electromagnetic human body models for the purpose of selecting application-specific parameters, such as frequency. Higher fidelity in the models leads to valuable physical insight into how the absorption and reflectivity of the human body phantom may be effectively used for vital sign detection. Toward this goal, the validation of two high fidelity models against each other is presented as well as a representative example of vital sign detection modeling.