Technologies

Cornell researchers have developed a non-invasive and low-cost method to monitor vital signs using passive and active radio frequency (RF) transmissions. Our method uses small non-invasive RFID sensors that accurately monitoring and broadcast vitals to a powered RFID reader.

We have developed a method that opens up new opportunities for vital sign monitoring with accuracy, comfort, convenience and low cost. This technique can be implemented with a passive tag which monitors backscattering or as an active tag antenna which observes reflection and can simultaneously sense multiple points and/or multiple people.

The wearable device consists of an antenna connected to a small contactless RFID chip; the antenna powers the device through energy scavenging. As a secondary function, the antenna senses both subtle and large movements within the body. When placed in the vicinity of the chest the device monitors the body’s physical movements, allowing respiration rate, breathing effort, and the wearer’s heartbeat/pulse to be measured.

The high sensitivity of this device and method can differentiate between large physical movements and smaller internal movements. Such precision enabled the monitoring of a wearers wrist pulse, when the device is placed near the wrist. Estimation of the blood pressure is obtained by combining the wrist pulse data with the wearer’s heartbeat data.

• The position of multiple tags can be determined with millimeter resolution

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