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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have demonstrated efficacy as a platform for remote life sensing in post-disaster search and rescue applications. Radar-assisted UAV respiration motion sensing technology also shows promise yet a significant technological challenge remains associated with interfering motion artefacts from the moving UAV platform. The feasibility of integrating an adaptive filter approach for the compensation of platform motion artefacts is investigated here for the extraction of respiratory motion signatures. A 24-GHz dual radar system was attached to a mechanical mover to emulating motion artefacts while measuring the motion of a robotic breathing phantom designed to reproduce breathing motion patterns. Recursive least square (RLS) and a least mean square (LMS) adaptive filter algorithms were employed to test efficacy for extracting respiratory rate from the motion corrupted breathing signal. Experimental results demonstrated that the RLS performed best with an accuracy of 98.24% for extracting the frequency of the robotic breathing phantom mover. The proposed system has several potential applications including military, humanitarian, and post-disaster search and rescue operations. 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with onboard Doppler radar sensors can be used for health reconnaissance including the remote detection of respiratory patterns associated with COVID-19. While respiratory diagnostics have been demonstrated with radar, the motion of the airborne introduces motion interference. An adaptive filter method is applied here which uses a second radar facing a non-moving surface (ceiling) for a nose cancellation reference signal. Variations in respiratory rate and displacement have been demonstrated which is consistent with the need for detecting tachypnea associated with COVID-19. 

One deadly aspect of COVID-19 is that those infected can often be contagious before exhibiting overt symptoms. While methods such as temperature checks and sinus swabs have aided with early detection, the former does not always provide a reliable indicator of COVID-19, and the latter is invasive and requires significant human and material resources to administer. This paper presents a non-invasive COVID-19 early screening system implementable with commercial off-the-shelf wireless communications devices. The system leverages the Doppler radar principle to monitor respiratory-related chest motion and identifies breathing rates that indicate COVID-19 infection. A prototype was developed from software-defined radios (SDRs) designed for 5G NR wireless communications and system performance was evaluated using a robotic mover simulating human breathing, and using actual breathing, resulting in a consistent respiratory rate accuracy better than one breath per minute, exceeding that used in common medical practice.Clinical Relevance-This establishes the potential efficacy of wireless communications based radar for recognizing respiratory disorders such as COVID-19.