Through-the-Wall Human Activity Recognition Using Radar Technologies: A Review

Abstract

Ultra-wideband radar technology (UWB) has demonstrated its vital role through various applications in surveillance, search and rescue, health monitoring, and the military. Unlike conventional radars, UWB radars use high-frequency, wide-bandwidth pulses, enabling long-range detection and penetrating obstacles. This work presents an in-depth review of UWB radar systems for recognizing human activities in a room and through-the-wall (TTW) with other diverse applications. After briefly discussing different UWB radar working principles and architectures, the study explores their role in various TTW applications in real-world scenarios. An extensive performance comparison of the legacy studies is presented, focusing on detection tools, signal processing, and imaging algorithms. The discussion includes an analysis of the integration of machine learning models. The primary focus is on the detection, movement, monitoring of vital signs, and nonhuman classifications in the context of Through-The-Wall (TTW) scenarios. This study contributes to a better understanding of evolving technology capabilities by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to automate and precisely locate the target in various scenarios. Furthermore, the discussion includes the impact of UWB technology on society, future industry trends, the commercial landscape, and ethical issues to understand and future research.

Keywords

• Ultra-wideband (UWB) radar
• IR-UWB radar
• CW-UWB radar
• through-the-wall (TTW) detection
• human motion
• human presence