Less contact: heart-rate detection without even touching the user

Heart-rate sensing is very important. Whereas there are different methods and commercial products available, they all have a common drawback: the user has to mount some piece of sensor to his body. This paper provides a case study on how micro-impulse radar (MIR) can be used to sense heart-rate in a contact-free manner. With a sequence of tests the robustness of radar to different placements and even distances from the subject is shown. Since MIR is also cheap and power-efficient this paper suggests heart-rate sensing through radar as a promising approach.