A Practical Case of Monitoring Older Adults Using mmWave Radar and UWB

Area of Science:

• Gerontology and Health Informatics
• Sensor Technology and Signal Processing
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Population aging necessitates unobtrusive, continuous monitoring in residential care.
• Radio-frequency (RF) technologies, including Ultra-Wideband (UWB) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar, offer privacy-preserving presence and movement detection.
• Existing systems require integration for comprehensive elderly monitoring.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a data-processing methodology for extracting quantitative mobility indicators from long-term indoor monitoring data.
• To assess the feasibility of a combined UWB and mmWave radar sensing system for elderly care.
• To provide individualized indicators of bedroom occupancy, sedentary behavior, and mobility.

Main Methods:

• A hybrid system combining device-free mmWave radar (bedrooms/bathrooms) and tag-based UWB positioning (common areas) was deployed.
• mmWave data utilized an adaptive short-term average/long-term average (STA/LTA) detector for movement classification.
• UWB data employed a Kalman filter with floor-plan constraints for trajectory smoothing and mobility metric derivation.

Main Results:

• The methodology successfully extracted individualized indicators of bedroom occupancy and non-sedentary activity from mmWave data.
• Smoothed UWB trajectories enabled the derivation of daily gait and mobility metrics.
• Proof-of-concept demonstrated the system's capability with one-day samples from three users.

Conclusions:

• The proposed data-processing methodology effectively extracts key mobility indicators for elderly monitoring.
• Combined UWB and mmWave radar sensing is feasible for longitudinal routine analysis in real-world elderly care.
• This approach supports enhanced, privacy-preserving monitoring in residential care environments.