VitalCSI: Contactless Respiratory Rate Estimation Using Consumer-Grade Wi-Fi Channel State Information

Continuous respiratory rate (RR) monitoring can improve the detection of clinical events, such as pulmonary infections, cardiac arrests, and sleep apnoea. Wi-Fi-based systems offer a low-cost, contactless alternative to radar and video. However, existing studies are limited to narrow respiratory ranges and small-scale validation. We present VitalCSI, a vital sign monitoring system using off-the-shelf, low-power Wi-Fi hardware. We recorded 15 healthy university athlete volunteers and developed RR estimation algorithms benchmarked against nasal airflow sensors. VitalCSI uses a consumer Wi-Fi access point and a Raspberry Pi computer to capture channel state information (CSI). We estimated the RR from CSI via principal component analysis (PCA), spectral peak detection, and breath (counting in 30 s windows), which were then fused by a multidimensional Kalman filter. VitalCSI showed strong agreement with airflow references (r2=0.93, MAE = 1.20 brpm), tracking RR across 6-33 brpm and outperforming prior Wi-Fi studies. VitalCSI demonstrates the feasibility of RR monitoring with a single-antenna, single-board microcomputer as the Wi-Fi transmitter. It is the first validated system for continuous, contactless RR monitoring using consumer-grade Wi-Fi over an extended respiratory range, paving the way for use in both home and sports monitoring contexts.