Real-Time People Counting Using IR-UWB Radar

COVID-19 pandemic has introduced social distance regulations which are crucial to be followed by. In order to maintain proper social distancing, it is critical to regulate the number of people in a closed space. In this paper, we propose a people counting system based on Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband radars for counting people walking through a doorway. The system uses two IR-UWB radars placed horizontally apart to create a lag effect when someone walks by the radars. This enables detection of movement's direction and subsequently, determination of the number of people in a room. The system proposed can be used for people counting in real-time and also on saved data which offers flexibility for real world applications. Several tests were conducted which shows the accuracy rate of system to be around 90%, validating the system. Contrary to conventional vision based people counting system, the proposed system is not limited by environmental factors such as light and also is privacy oriented.