ABSTRACT
Every year situation when the Arctic seas are free of ice is becoming more frequent. It allows scientists to study hard-to-reach areas using well-equipped research vessels instead of icebreakers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the successful expedition of the research vessel Academician Mstislav Keldysh with more than 60 scientists from 15 countries across the four Arctic seas (Barents, Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian) on September - November 2020 seems like a real wonder. One of the expedition tasks was remote sensing of different hydrophysical processes by their manifestation on the sea surface using marine radar. The present paper proposes the method of generating high spatial resolution radar maps of the sea surface and algorithms of hydrophysical processes identification. This paper also presents examples of registered processes such as wind waves, ice fields with different types of ice (grease ice, pancake ice, nilas, and young ice), manifestations of internal waves observed in the Kara Gate and Vilkitsky Strait, as well as manifestations of intense methane seeps on the sea surface. This paper contains quantitative estimations of the physical parameters of the observed processes underlying the effectiveness of Doppler marine radars in harsh conditions of the Arctic seas. Author
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar sensor architecture for contactless vital signs detection and monitoring at the industrial, scientific, medical (ISM) 60 GHz band. Such fast remote touchless monitoring is extremely important during pandemic seasons such as COVID-19. The architecture utilizes a leaky wave antenna to synthesize a reconfigurable radar beam whose direction is steered in the space without additional modulator circuits. The modulatorless architecture enables monitoring the vital signs of multiple patients at different locations by measuring the Doppler shifts from their movements. Furthermore, it also offers building power and cost effective sensor components by eliminating the modulator circuitry. The system considerations of the proposed architecture are discussed and the Doppler radar technique for vital signs detection is reviewed. A laboratory experiment of measuring the Doppler shift due to a vibrating target using a prototype of the proposed sensor is successfully conducted. The application of the proposed sensor can be extended to remotely scan and control running machines in industrial environments. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In the COVID-19 era, the provision of health indicators seamlessly and without contact, in groups at risk such as the elderly, is crucial due to the fast spread of the disease and the need to act quickly to contain its evolution. Continuous monitoring of vital signs, such as body temperature and cardio-respiratory rates, can be vital in early detection and prediction of COVID-19, which rapidly progresses and particularly affects the elderly population in nursing homes. Conventional clinical methods used for monitoring vital signs are contact-based, require contact sensors that need to be precisely attached by a trained health professional, are less convenient for repeatable measurements, and not practical for long-term monitoring. On the other hand, contactless vital signs monitoring using radar-based techniques, or IR-thermal imaging, do not require the attachment of physical electrodes and can be of great value in health screening of patients and help health professionals in early detection of the COVID-19 in the elderly population, in the specific context of nursing houses. This work describes the design and specification of a low-cost contactless health screening system for nursing homes, and includes the design of an IoT Edge device that can be placed above the beds where patients rest, allowing the continuous acquisition of health information and its processing without any type of contact and invasiveness. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Breathing rate monitoring is a must for hospitalized patients with the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We review in this paper recent implementations of breathing monitoring techniques, where both contact and remote approaches are presented. It is known that with non-contact monitoring, the patient is not tied to an instrument, which improves patients' comfort and enhances the accuracy of extracted breathing activity, since the distress generated by a contact device is avoided. Remote breathing monitoring allows screening people infected with COVID-19 by detecting abnormal respiratory patterns. However, non-contact methods show some disadvantages such as the higher set-up complexity compared to contact ones. On the other hand, many reported contact methods are mainly implemented using discrete components. While, numerous integrated solutions have been reported for non-contact techniques, such as continuous wave (CW) Doppler radar and ultrawideband (UWB) pulsed radar. These radar chips are discussed and their measured performances are summarized and compared.