Application of a Continuous Wave Radar for Human Gait Recognition

A continuous wave (CW) radar has been used for the detection and classification of people based on the Doppler signatures they produce when walking. When humans walk, the motion of various components of the body including the torso, arms, and legs produce a very characteristic Doppler signature. Fourier transform techniques were used to analyze these signatures and key features were identified that are very representative of the human walking motion. Data was collected on a number of human subjects and a simple classifier was developed to recognize people walking. The results of this study could have a wide range of security and perimeter protection applications involving the use of low-cost CW radars as remote sensors.