WiFi-Based Detection of Human Subtle Motion for Health Applications

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease affect motor symptoms with abnormally increased or reduced movements. Symptoms such as tremor and hand movement disorders can be subtle and vary daily such that the actual condition of the disease may not fully present in clinical sessions. Health examination and monitoring, if available in the living space, can capture comprehensive and quantitative information about a patient’s motor symptoms, allowing physicians to make a precise diagnosis and devise a more personalized treatment. WiFi-based sensing is a potential solution for passively detecting human motion in a contactless way that collects no personally identifiable information. This study proposed an approach for human micromotion detection using the WiFi channel state information, which can be realized in a regular-sized room for home health monitoring and examination. Three types of motion were tested to evaluate the proposed method in quantifying micromotion using single and multiple WiFi links. The results show that micromotion could be captured at all distributed locations in the experimental environment (4.2 m × 7.9 m). Our computer algorithm computed the frequency and duration of simulated hand tremors with an average accuracy of 90.9% (single WiFi link)—95.7% (multiple WiFi links).