Clutter Elimination and Harmonic Suppression of Non-Stationary Life Signs for Long-Range and Through-Wall Human Subject Detection Using Spectral Kurtosis Analysis (SKA)-Based Windowed Fourier Transform (WFT) Method

Abstract

Life sign detection is important in many applications, such as locating disaster victims. This can be difficult in low signal to noise ratio (SNR) and through-wall conditions. This paper considers life sign detection using an impulse ultra-wideband (UWB) bio-radar with an improved sensing algorithm for clutter elimination, harmonic suppression and random-noise de-noising. To improve detection performance, two filters are used to improve SNR of these life signs. The automatic gain method is performed in fast time to improve the respiration signals. The spectral kurtosis analysis (SKA)-based windowed Fourier transform (WFT) method and an accumulator in the frequency domain are used to provide two distance estimates between the radar and human subject. Further, the accumulator can also provide the frequency estimate of the respiration signals. These estimates are used to determine if a human is present in the detection environment. Results are presented which show that the range and respiration frequency can be estimated accurately in low signal to noise and clutter ratio (SNCR) environments. In addition, the performance is better than with other techniques given in the literature.