The current mainstream elderly safety monitoring and health management products all need to install various sensor electrodes on the human body, which is a contact solution, and its use is limited, especially for scenarios that require long-term monitoring, the problem is obvious: inconvenient , It is necessary to wear related equipment for a long time, whether it is wearable or restrained, etc. Wearing it for a long time will bring trouble to people; it is uncomfortable, and the main audience is the elderly, who are especially sensitive to wearing and wearing medical and health equipment.
In order to effectively solve the shortcomings of current related technologies and products, and meet the market demand for elderly safety monitoring and health monitoring, we have focused on the research and development of bio-radar technology. Bioradar technology can measure very small movements, such as breathing and heartbeat. By emitting electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency, detecting the reflected signal, and performing certain signal processing, the effective frequency information can be extracted, and finally the heartbeat and breathing frequency can be detected respectively. This technology has the advantages of high sensitivity, no radiation hazard, non-contact and non-inductive monitoring and good privacy.
my country's huge elderly population base breeds huge market opportunities: health services, real estate, tourism, insurance and other industries are the most prominent. Among them, the elderly health service industry is a representative industry. In 2018, the national elderly health service market scale reached 2.25 trillion yuan, conservatively estimated at a compound annual growth rate of 10% (the average annual compound growth rate from 2004 to 2018 was 23%). In 2025, my country's elderly health service market The capacity will be close to 4 trillion yuan. It is conservatively estimated that the market for bio-radar products for elderly safety monitoring and health monitoring can reach a scale of 100 billion.
Elderly health management based on UWB bioradar
2. Research content
a) Based on the team's existing ultra-wideband biological radar prototype, quickly develop and finalize ultra-wideband biological radar products for market promotion. The figure below is a block diagram of the product, which mainly consists of several parts: ultra-wideband radio frequency module, baseband processing unit, antenna, biological radar signal detection unit, and IoT communication module. Among them, the dotted line box is the existing product prototype, and the yellow highlighted part is the key research scope of this project: high-performance ultra-wideband antenna, bio-radar signal detection algorithm, and Internet of Things communication integration technology.
b) The current product prototype is developed based on the ultra-wideband chip and module of the strategic partner. The team will choose the opportunity to research and develop the self-developed ultra-wideband chip to effectively enhance the core competitiveness and ensure that the core technology is independently controllable.
3. Key technologies
a) Ultra-wideband high-performance antenna: target frequency band 6-9GHz, bandwidth 3GHz. The design of large-bandwidth antennas in this frequency band is a difficult problem in the industry. The product prototype uses a mature dual-conical antenna, as shown in the figure below. The biggest disadvantage is that the product structure is not compact, the volume is relatively large, and it is also easily damaged. We will cooperate with first-class professors in academia to design a large-bandwidth, high-gain, and small-sized panel antenna to meet the performance requirements of the product, and it is also easy to integrate the product to ensure that the product is compact and compact.
b) Bio-radar signal detection algorithm: At the algorithm level, the product prototype mainly completes the baseband processing of radar signals, and can only provide relatively primitive and rough bio-sign signal detection. How to quickly and accurately detect the sign information from the weak bio-radar signal is the key technology of bio-radar products. We will develop artificial intelligence-based biological radar signal detection algorithms to improve detection accuracy and speed.
c) IoT communication integration technology: product prototypes need to be connected to external devices via Ethernet, which is not conducive to actual deployment. We will develop IoT communication integration technology and integrate WIFI/Bluetooth wireless modules in products. In turn, it realizes fast connection between products and external devices such as mobile phones and gateways, which facilitates product deployment and improves product user experience. As shown in the figure below, UWB bio-radar can be deployed alone or integrated with home appliances and furniture. The sign information (respiration, heartbeat, body posture, etc.) obtained by the bio-radar can be connected to the mobile phone/gateway through the IoT communication (WIFI/Bluetooth, etc.) module integrated in the product, and then presented through the APP or cloud service. It should be emphasized that this figure mainly shows the deployment method of the bio-radar. In actual use, one device in one room is usually enough.
d) Ultra-wideband chip: The current product is developed based on the ultra-wideband chip of a strategic partner. The team leader has rich chip development experience and resources. Technology is autonomous and controllable.
4. Main innovation points
a) Ultra-wideband, high-gain, small-size antenna design;
b) Bio-radar signal detection algorithm based on artificial intelligence;
c) Design and development of ultra-wideband chips.
6. Main functions and application fields
Our target product, the main function of ultra-wideband bio-radar products is to detect the basic signs of people and animals (breathing, heartbeat, body posture, etc.).
The main application areas are:
a) Smart elderly care - safety monitoring and health monitoring. Safety monitoring includes fall detection, activity monitoring, etc.; health monitoring includes long-term monitoring, analysis and intervention of basic signs such as breathing and heartbeat;
Taking Shanghai as an example, in May 2020, the municipal government issued a list of smart elderly care needs in Shanghai, which are divided into 4 categories and 12 application scenarios, including security protection, nursing services, health services and emotional care. Our analysis found that ultra-wideband bio-radar can meet the needs of at least three application scenarios: elderly fall prevention scenarios, elderly care scenarios, and institutional intelligent ward rounds scenarios.