Contact and Remote Breathing Rate Monitoring Techniques: A Review

Breathing rate monitoring is a must for hospitalized patients with the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We review in this paper recent implementations of breathing monitoring techniques, where both contact and remote approaches are presented. It is known that with non-contact monitoring, the patient is not tied to an instrument, which improves patients' comfort and enhances the accuracy of extracted breathing activity, since the distress generated by a contact device is avoided. Remote breathing monitoring allows screening people infected with COVID-19 by detecting abnormal respiratory patterns. However, non-contact methods show some disadvantages such as the higher set-up complexity compared to contact ones. On the other hand, many reported contact methods are mainly implemented using discrete components. While, numerous integrated solutions have been reported for non-contact techniques, such as continuous wave (CW) Doppler radar and ultrawideband (UWB) pulsed radar. These radar chips are discussed and their measured performances are summarized and compared.

Automated summary

Monitoring breathing rate is crucial for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, where both contact and non-contact methods are used. Non-contact methods offer improved comfort for patients and avoid the discomfort caused by contact devices, but they may have higher setup complexity compared to contact methods. Integrated solutions using radar chips, such as CW Doppler radar and UWB pulsed radar, have been reported for non-contact monitoring.