Microwave and millimeter-wave Doppler radar can be used to remotely detect physiological parameters, such as respiration and heart signals. Recent work on physiological Doppler radar further sought to extend continuous radar monitoring beyond controlled settings and into unconstrained environments common to applications such as security, human-machine interface, at-home medical tests, intelligent buildings, search and rescue operations. Challenges in unconstrained environments include the separation of signals from multiple individuals and ubiquitous coverage indoors and outdoors. This thesis addresses those challenges as follows: (1) phase correlation approach is proposed and demonstrated effective for signal separation from multiple, close spaces sources using a single antenna, single channel 2.4 GHz radar (2) physiological sensing using channel state information (CSI) for 28 GHz OFDM communication system is modeled and successfully demonstrated experimentally, and (3) a compact, fully integrated 24 GHz dual radar system is implemented to enable noise cancellation for UAV remote life sensing.

Khaldoon M Ishmael received the ASNS degree in engineering from Leeward Community College in 2015 and the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2017 and 2018. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, focusing on R.F./microwave technologies for biomedical applications. His research interests include non-invasive physiological sensors, radar systems, antenna array signal processing, adaptive filter techniques, and radar signal separation methods. In the summer of 2015 and 2016, Mr. Ishmael was a recipient of the DoD Pathways Internship Program. In the summer of 2017 and 2018, through the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program, he worked as an Engineering Research Intern with Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific), Pearl City, Hawai’i, where his research focused on wafer-scale integration technologies for wireless and optical communications. In 2019, Mr. Ishmael received a Department of Defense (DoD) Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship. He received the 2021 Frederick M. Kresser Advancing Science in America (ARCS) Award in Engineering at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. In 2021, Mr. Ishmael won the nationwide DoD SMART Scholars and Mentor Award for the research study of Doppler radar physiological sensing. Mr. Ishmael is a U.S. Army Veteran.