FM-UWB for Communications and Radar in Medical Applications

UWB technology is a useful and safe new technology in the area of wireless body area network. There are many advantages of using UWB as a communication standard for biomedical applications. Due to very low radiated power (−41.3 dBm/MHz), low power consumption, good coexistence with the other existing instruments, Robustness to interference and multipath. Moreover, one specific UWB technology, namely Frequency Modulated (FM)-UWB, has also an important advantage, which make it even more convenient for medical applications, such as simple low cost design (FM, no receive LO, no carrier synchronization as in IR-UWB). UWB technology has been also proposed radar applications such as: Non-Invasive Heart and Respiration Rate Monitoring; Detection of Cardiac Arrhythmias; Detection of Pathological Respiratory Patterns, particularly in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and Sleep Apnea; Multi-Patient Monitoring; Detection and Non-Invasive Imaging of Breast Tumors. However, pulsed radar are mainly used for these applications. The main issue that is addressed in this paper is the integration of sensing and communication using FM-UWB and radar technology so that a single device can be obtained for two different operational mode. We have show that FM-UWB as radar can meet the requirements of typical biomedical applications such as Non-Invasive Heart and Respiration Rate Monitoring. Advantages and challenges of this integration are shown. Future perspectives of this novel activity will be drawn.