2013 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on

RF and Wireless Technologies for Biomedical and Healthcare Applications (IMWS-BIO)

Doppler Bio-signal detection Based Time-Domain Hand Gesture

Recognition
Chuan Zheng*, Tiancun Hu‡, Shan Qiao†, Yongzhi Sun§, Jiangtao Huangfu* and Lixin Ran*
*
Laboratory of Applied Research on Electromagnetics (ARE)
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
Email: ranlx@zju.edu.cn
†
Zhejiang University City College, Hangzhou 310015, China
‡
Science and Technology on Space Microwave Laboratory, Xi’an, 710100, China
§
Nanjing Institute of Electronic Equipment, Nanjing 210007, China
Abstract — Utilizing Doppler effect to detect bio-signals of vital
signs has been attracting more and more interests. In this paper,
we propose a time-domain algorithm for the hand gesture

dB
dA
recognition. We introduce an extended differentiate and cross-
multiply algorithm to solve the null point and the codomain

y(cm)
restriction issues in traditional Doppler radar sensors, and
retrieve the Doppler bio-signals of a moving hand from the
demodulated phase signals based on a configuration of 2 or 3
radar sensors for 2-D or 3-D HGRs. Simulations validate the
effectiveness of the proposed approach. Our method is capable of
retrieving arbitrary hand movements, making it possible to be
used in a wide range of HGR applications. Antenna A Antenna B x(cm)
Index Terms —Doppler bio-signals, DACM algorithm, hand d0
guesture recognition.
Fig.1. 2-D configuration of hand recognition system.

I. INTRODUCTION under a priori knowledge of the initial position of the hand,

which can be widely used in HGR applications.
Doppler Effect detected by microwave Doppler radars has
been used to sense object movements for decades. In bio-
signal detection area, applications include the cardiac activity II. THEORY
detection [1], through-wall concealed individuals sensing [2]
Fig. 1 illustrates the configuration diagram of a two-
and human hand gesture recognition (HGR) [3]. Due to the
dimensional (2-D) HGR Doppler radar sensor system. Assume
fact that the detection of Doppler signals is highly sensitive
the distance between antennas A and B is d0, dA and dB are the
and requires relative simple hardwares, such applications are
initial distances between the antennas and the hand,
expected to be widely used.
respectively. Neglecting the amplitude variation and
In this paper, we discuss the Doppler radar sensor based
normalizing the signal amplitude to 1, the transmitting signal
HGR using an extended differentiate and cross-multiply
by antenna A can be expressed as
(DACM) algorithm we proposed recently, aiming to solve the
null point and the phase codomain restriction issues in s(t) = cos(2π ft + ϕ(t )) , (1)
traditional demodulation algorithms [4][5]. By applying the
extended DACM algorithm, while the noise performance is where f and φ(t) denote the carrier frequency and the phase
significantly improved, the measurement dependence on noise of the transmitter, respectively. Antennas A and B
distance and motion scale issues are also completely avoided. receive different signals scattered by the moving hand, each
We also propose a time-domain algorithm to process the reflecting the motion information seen in the corresponding
demodulated Doppler bio-signals, to retrieve the motion direction.
information of a moving hand for the HGR. We use a For each radar sensor, the received signal can be expressed
measurement configuration consisting of 2 or 3 Doppler radar by
sensors, to measure the Doppler bio-signals containing the
⎛ 4πdA 4πΔxA ( t ) ⎞
hand motion information in different directions. The 2-D or 3- RA = cos ⎜ 2πft − − ⎟, (2)
D hand motions can be finally recovered by combining such ⎝ λ λ ⎠
measured motions in different directions. Theoretically, our ⎛ 2πdA 2πdB 2π ΔxA ( t ) 2π ΔxB ( t ) ⎞
method is capable of retrieving arbitrary hand movements RB = cos ⎜ 2πft − − − − ⎟ . (3)
⎝ λ λ λ λ ⎠

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 2013 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on
RF and Wireless Technologies for Biomedical and Healthcare Applications (IMWS-BIO)

50 0.5 0.5
Intersections region 35 Without noise Without noise
With noise With noise

Q signal
I signal
34.8
0 0
34.6

y(cm)
y(cm)

0 Radar A 34.4
Radar B −0.5 −0.5
34.2 0 0.02 0.04 0 0.02 0.04
Time(s) Time(s)
34 (a)
−50
−60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 33.8 0.5 0.4
−5 −4.5 −4 Without noise Without noise
x(cm) x(cm)

Q signal
With noise With noise

I signal
0.3
(a) (b) 0
0.2
Fig.2. Time-domain HGR. (a) Locating intersections for the HGR. (b)
Zoom-in of the intersection region. −0.5 0.1
0 0.02 0.04 0 0.02 0.04
Time(s) Time(s)
(b)
where △xA(t) and △xB(t) describe the hand’s displacements
Fig.3. The I/Q signals down-converted by quadrature
from the initial position along the directions seen by the
demodulation.(a) Antenna A. (b) Antenna B.
antenna A and B at time t, respectively.
At time t, the time-varying distance between the radar In digital domain, the proposed extended DACM algorithm
antennas and the moving hand is dA(t)+xA(t) and dB(t)+xB(t), can be given in a discrete form [5], i.e. ,
respectively. We can locate the intersections of two circles.
Knowing the initial position of the hand, the correct
n
I [k ]{Q[k ] − Q[k − 1]} − { I [k ] − I [k − 1]} Q[k ]
Φ[n] = ∑ . (10)
intersection is chosen for the HGR. As the time increases, the k =2 I [k ]2 + Q[k ]2
movement of this intersection reflects the exact movement of
the moving hand in the 2-D plane. Fig. 2 shows the case when Φ(t) can be recovered from the baseband signals, regardless
the hand is moving along a straight line. of the codomain restriction of (-π/2, π/2) caused by possible
It is straight forward to extend the 2-D HGR to a 3-D large-scale hand motions. By (9), d0+x(t) can be retrieved. It is
scenario. Compared with the 2-D case, the 3-D HGR requires seen that this algorithm is simple and straightforward, without
at least 1 transmitting and 3 receiving antennas located in a 3- using any complex mathematical functions.
D coordinate system.
The received signals are down-converted to baseband by a III. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
digital quadrature demodulation. The three baseband signals
are mathematically described by To validate the proposed time-domain HGR algorithm,
simulations for retrieving 2-D movements of a moving human
⎛ 4πdA 2πxA ( t ) ⎞ hand are performed. In the simulations, we use a moving
R A = cos ⎜ + ⎟ , (4)
conducting cylinder to imitate a moving finger, such that the
⎝ λ λ ⎠
scattered signal can be calculated directly based on analytical
⎛ 2πdA 2πdB 2πxA ( t ) 2πxB ( t ) ⎞ equations provided by scattering theory, without losing any
R B = cos ⎜ + + + ⎟, (5) generality.
⎝ λ λ λ λ ⎠
Consider an incident plane wave linearly polarized parallel
⎛ 2πdA 2πdC 2πxA ( t ) 2πxC ( t ) ⎞ to the cylinder [6]. In a cylindrical coordinate system, we have
RC = cos ⎜ + + + ⎟ , (6)
⎝ λ λ λ λ ⎠ ˆ 0e − ikx = zE
E 0 = zE ˆ 0e − ikρ ( t )cosφ , (11)
where the radii of these spheres are dA+xA(t), dB+xB(t), and where k is the magnitude of the wave vector and ρ(t) is the
dC+xC(t), and the origins can be determined by the locations of distance between the transmitting antenna and the cylinder.
the antennas, respectively. The hand motion is retrieved from In the far-field where kρ(t)>>1, making use of asymptotic
the time-varying intersection of the three spheres, similar to formula Hn(1)(kρ(t)), the scattered wave can be expressed as
the 2-D case as shown in Fig. 2.
π ⎡ 1 ( ka ) ⎤
4
After the demodulation, the baseband in-phase (I) and
+ ( ka ) cosφ (t ) −
2
Es ≈ −zE
ˆ 0 ⎢ +…⎥ eikρ(t ) . (12)
quadrature-phase (Q) signals can be expressed as i 2kρ(t ) ⎢⎣ ln ( ka ) 8 ⎥⎦
I ( t ) = AI cos (Φ(t ) ) , (7)
It is seen that the term in (12) relating the frequency shift is
eikρ(t). Therefore, by applying the DACM algorithm, we can
Q ( t ) = AQ sin (Φ(t ) ) , (8) retrieve the relative displacements, respectively. Finally,
making use of the proposed algorithm, we can get the accurate
4πd0 2πx ( t ) hand motion by retrieving the movement of the chosen
Φ(t) = + . (9)
λ λ intersection, which reflects the actual motion of the hand. To

978-1-4673-6096-8/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

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 2013 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on
RF and Wireless Technologies for Biomedical and Healthcare Applications (IMWS-BIO)

0.52
With noise 1
Without noise Without noise
0.5
With noise
Motion(m) 0.8

Motion(m)
0.48 0.6

0.46 0.4

0.2
0.44
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Time(s)
(a)
0
0.52
With noise 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Without noise
0.5 Time(s)
Fig.6. Retrieved hand motion of a sinusoidal motion. Compare the
Motion(m)

0.48
ideal recovery with the recovery including white noise.
0.46

0.44
IV. CONCLUSION
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Time(s)
(b)
In conclusion, we propose a time-domain algorithm for
Fig.4. Demodulated signals after applying the extended DACM HGRs. We introduce an extended DACM algorithm to solve
algorithm. (a) Antenna A. (b) Antenna B. the null point and the codomain restriction issues in traditional
Doppler radar sensors, and retrieve the Doppler bio-signals of
0.05
a moving hand from the demodulated phase signals based on a
Without noise
With noise
configuration consisting of 2 or 3 radar sensors for 2-D or 3-D
0.04
HGRs. Simulations validated the effectiveness of the proposed
Motion(m)

0.03 approach. Our method is capable of retrieving arbitrary hand

movements and can be widely used in HGR applications.
0.02

0.01
0
0 0.01 0.02 0.03
Time(s)
Fig.5. Retrieved hand motion of straight line movement. Compare
the ideal recovery with the recovery including white noise.
investigate the robustness of the proposed approach, we
introduce Gaussian white noise to the demodulated signals, to
compare the obtained HGR with the ideal case.
Fig. 3 shows the results of I/Q signals received by antennas
A and B located at (-40,-20) and (-40, 20), respectively. In the
simulation, the cylinder radius is 7.5 mm and is moving along
the line y = x with a velocity of 1 m/s and in a period of 0.05 s.
We see that the antenna A and B detect different I/Q signals
due to their different positions.
Fig. 4 shows the demodulated signals after applying the
extended DACM algorithm. It is seen that the antenna A and
B see different linear motions of the cylinder, respectively.
Fig. 5 shows the movement retrieved by time-domain HGR
algorithm. It is seen that a linear motion along the line y = x is
finally retrieved by combining the movement seen by antenna
A and B, respectively.
A sinusoidal motion with a velocity of 1 m/s within π
seconds is retrieved as shown in Fig.6. It is seen that the
sinusoidal motion is also properly retrieved from the raw data
received by the antennas A and B. Theoretically, the proposed
algorithm is capable of retrieving arbitrary hand movements,
making it possible to be used in a wide range of HGR
applications.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
0.04 0.05
This work was supported by the NSFC under grants
61102003, 61071063 and 61131002, the China Postdoctoral
Science Foundation under grant 2013T60488, and the
National Key Laboratory Foundation of China under grant
9140C530101130C53001.
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[3] Q. F. Pu, S. Gupta, S. Gollakota, and S. Patel, “Whole-Home
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[4] F. Schadt, F. Mohr, and M. Holzer, “Application of Kalman
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[5] J. Wang, X. Wang, J. Huangfu, C. Li, and L. Ran, “Non-contact
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[6] JIN AU KONG, Electromagnetic wave theory, Cambridge, MA, EMW
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