Effects of range spread and aspect angle on radar fall detection

Abstract

Single-sensor Doppler radar faces many challenges in elderly fall detection. The similarities of the Doppler signatures between falls and other motions of fast time transitions render CW-based EM sensing insufficient for proper motion discriminator. Further, motion articulations in the directions of a small or zero projections along the line-of-sight generate noisy Doppler signatures and greatly contribute to the confusion matrix. In this paper, the benefit from the range information is used to distinguish between fall and non-fall motions with similar Doppler features. We also examine the effects of the aspect angle on fall detection. Simulation results using Kinect-based radar simulator and 24 GHz UWB radar sensing system, demonstrate the merits of the proposed platform for indoor motion monitoring serving assisted living applications.