Comprehensive mPoint: A Method for 3D Point Cloud Generation of Human Bodies Utilizing FMCW MIMO mm-Wave Radar

In this paper, comprehensive mPoint, a method for generating 3D (range, azimuth, and elevation) point cloud of human targets using a Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) signal and Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) millimeter wave radar is proposed. Distinct from the TI-mPoint method proposed by TI technology, a comprehensive mPoint method considering both the static and dynamic characteristics of radar reflected signals is utilized to generate a high precision point cloud, resulting in more comprehensive information of the target being detected. The radar possessing 60–64 GHz FMCW signal with two sets of different dimensional antennas is utilized in order to experimentally verify the results of the methodology. By using the proposed process, the point cloud data of human targets can be obtained based on six different postures of the underlying human body. The human posture cube and point cloud accuracy rates are defined in the paper in order to quantitively and qualitatively evaluate the quality of the generated point cloud. Benefitting from the proposed comprehensive mPoint, evidence shows that the point number and the accuracy rate of the generated point cloud compared with those from the popular TI-mPoint can be largely increased by 86% and 42%, respectively. In addition, the noise level of multipath reflection can be effectively reduced. Moreover, the length of the algorithm running time is only 1.6% longer than that of the previous method as a slight tradeoff.