Non-contact Blood Pressure Estimation with Pulse Wave employing Microwave Reflection

Abstract

Nowadays it is recommended to do blood pressure measurements on a daily basis at home to prevent diseases caused by high blood pressure. Blood pressure measurements methods using a cuff is most commonly used. However, it is a burden for hypertensive patients and the elderly to put on a blood pressure cuff repeatedly for the multi-metering of blood pressure. Non-contact measurement will provide a comfortable and easy method to monitor blood pressure and pulse rates continuously. This paper proposes a non-contact method to measure both pulse rates and blood pressure simultaneously. In the experiment, microwave signals were transmitted to the body and the reception intensity was measured. The microwave frequencies used in this experiment were 2.4GHz and 5.6GHz. The pulse rates and the blood pressure can be estimated by processing the data obtained from microwave reflection. The experiment results show that the 2.4GHz microwave signals have better estimation accuracy. It indicates that our proposed system is practical and has great potential for the future smart health monitoring system.