RADAR Sensing for Human Activity Monitoring of Daily Living Simultaneously in Multiple Subjects

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As the COVID-19 disease began to spread across the world, the elderly population (aged 65+) experienced greater adverse effects from the pandemic, including more severe complications, higher mortality and disruptions to monitoring their human activities of daily living (ADL), including critical events (falls and wandering behavior) and access to care [1]. This disruption has been observed at homes and in care homes, where contact with family members and caregivers became more limited, due to isolation and lockdown. Statistics indicate that more than 70% of the elderly experience the types of critical events mentioned earlier when performing ADL, and their consequences can lead to a decreased quality of life and serious injuries, as well as heavy financial impact on the health and social care services. Innovative technological solutions, such as remote continuous monitoring using sensing devices, have the potential to improve quality of life and preserve safe, independent living with dignity, especially under isolation and lockdown, in homes or care homes. Sensing techniques including contact approaches (accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope) and non-contact approaches (acoustic-based, vision-based sensors, and pyroelectric infrared) have all been used at some stage in the monitoring of older adults' ADL. However, contact systems are often expensive, have sticky electrodes which can cause skin irritation during long-term monitoring and can generate noisy signals with poor contact. Non-contact systems, on the other hand, can be affected by light intensity in the space being monitored, low illumination conditions and evoke costly overheads in terms of complicated hardware installation, diverse maintenance needs and raise privacy concerns. RADAR systems use the reflected RF signal when encountering a moving subject within its range and work contactlessly in low illumination conditions, requiring no recording of images/videos, demanding no alterations to ADL and there is no element of stigmatizing the person because of their health problems and we believe are more likely to be accepted by users. The primary aim of this project is to develop and evaluate a multistatic (multiple RADAR sensor nodes) RADAR sensing system to monitor the ADL including but not limited to walking, sitting down, standing up, eating, lying on bed and picking up objects in multiple older adults simultaneously using machine learning algorithms. Specifically, the aim is to capture critical events such as falls and wandering behaviour.This multidisciplinary project will combine state-of-the-art research in the field of RADAR sensing technologies, advanced signal processing and machine learning, as well as engagement from potential end-users (older adults, family members, residential care staff).Reference[1]. Wu, B. Social isolation and loneliness among older adults in the context of COVID-19: a global challenge. glob health res policy, 2020.