PGGait: Gait Recognition Based on Millimeter-Wave Radar Spatio-Temporal Sensing of Multidimensional Point Clouds

Abstract

Gait recognition, crucial in biometrics and behavioral analytics, has applications in human–computer interaction, identity verification, and health monitoring. Traditional sensors face limitations in complex or poorly lit settings. RF-based approaches, particularly millimeter-wave technology, are gaining traction for their privacy, insensitivity to light conditions, and high resolution in wireless sensing applications. In this paper, we propose a gait recognition system called Multidimensional Point Cloud Gait Recognition (PGGait). The system uses commercial millimeter-wave radar to extract high-quality point clouds through a specially designed preprocessing pipeline. This is followed by spatial clustering algorithms to separate users and perform target tracking. Simultaneously, we enhance the original point cloud data by increasing velocity and signal-to-noise ratio, forming the input of multidimensional point clouds. Finally, the system inputs the point cloud data into a neural network to extract spatial and temporal features for user identification. We implemented the PGGait system using a commercially available 77 GHz millimeter-wave radar and conducted comprehensive testing to validate its performance. Experimental results demonstrate that PGGait achieves up to 96.75% accuracy in recognizing single-user radial paths and exceeds 94.30% recognition accuracy in the two-person case. This research provides an efficient and feasible solution for user gait recognition with various applications.