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Millimeter-Wave Body-Centric Radar Sensing for Continuous Monitoring of Human Gait Dynamics
Yoginath Ganditi1, Mani S Chilakala1, Zahra Najafi1
1Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, California State University, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA.
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
|March 28, 2026
Summary
A shoe-mounted millimeter-wave radar system significantly improves gait monitoring accuracy compared to a fixed system. This wearable technology offers a promising solution for unobtrusive, privacy-preserving gait analysis in real-world settings.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Wearable Technology
- Sensor Systems
Background:
- Gait analysis is crucial for assessing mobility decline and fall risk.
- Current methods often require specialized laboratory settings.
- There is a need for unobtrusive, real-world gait monitoring solutions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the performance of two millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar deployment configurations for gait analysis.
- To evaluate a fixed (corridor-mounted) versus a body-centric (shoe-mounted) sensor setup.
- To assess the accuracy of step count estimation using low-cost system-on-chip (SoC) radar.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a low-cost 60 GHz mmWave FMCW radar SoC sensor.
- Compared a fixed tripod-mounted sensor with a shoe-mounted sensor attached to the medial side of the left shoe.
- Recorded gait trials of healthy adults across five different gait styles (regular, slow, fast, simulated festination, simulated freezing-of-gait).
- Detected step events using velocity envelopes and adaptive thresholds to derive gait parameters.
- Quantitatively compared sensor performance against video ground truth using Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) for step count.
Main Results:
- The shoe-mounted FMCW radar configuration consistently demonstrated lower step-count error compared to the fixed configuration across all tested gait styles.
- Significant improvements were observed with the shoe-mounted system, particularly for irregular gait patterns like simulated festination (9.6% error vs. 37.1% for fixed).
- Low-cost SoC radar proved effective for extracting key gait parameters.
Conclusions:
- Body-centric millimeter-wave radar sensing offers distinct advantages for gait monitoring over fixed configurations.
- Low-cost SoC radar technology is a viable pathway for developing wearable, privacy-preserving gait monitoring systems for real-world applications.
- This approach supports continuous and unobtrusive assessment of mobility and fall risk.
