A Simple FDTD Model to Asses the Feasibility of Heart Beat Detection using commercial UWB communication devices

This work studies the propagation and the attenuation suffered by an UWB impulse on its way to the human heart traveling through the chest. The latter is modeled as multiple semi-infinite lossy and dispersive media. The radiated impulse is a Gaussian monocycle similar to those used in UWB communications. The formulation uses the FDTD method to approximate the solution of the Maxwell’s equations. The results show that the chest attenuates the impulse approximately 42dB which is significantly lower than the values predicted by previous approximations. This would eventually improve the performance and range of UWB vital signs sensing applications.