What if your home WiFi could do more than stream Netflix? Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have unveiled Pulse-Fi, a system that transforms everyday WiFi signals into precise health monitors capable of tracking heartbeats.
The concept is simple yet groundbreaking: a standard WiFi transmitter and receiver detect faint variations in radio waves caused by heartbeats. By applying machine learning algorithms, the system filters out noise from movement or the environment, isolating the rhythm of the heart with clinical-level accuracy.
Tested on 118 volunteers, Pulse-Fi achieved an error margin of just half a beat per minute after five seconds of monitoring. Accuracy improved with longer measurements, whether participants were sitting, standing, lying down, or even walking.
This innovation could signal a future where WiFi routers double as non-invasive health trackers, eliminating the need for wearables like smartwatches or hospital-grade devices.
The technology runs on ultra-low-cost hardware such as ESP32 chips (just $5–$10) and Raspberry Pi boards (~$30). The researchers suggest that commercial-grade routers could push accuracy even further, expanding its clinical potential.
Pulse-Fi works by analyzing how radio frequency waves interact with the body. A heartbeat slightly alters the way these signals scatter and absorb. Neural networks trained on ground-truth data from standard oximeters learned to map these fluctuations directly to heart rate.
Experiments were carried out at UC Santa Cruz’s Science and Engineering Library, and the team also validated their approach against an external dataset from Brazil, confirming robust performance.
Beyond heart rate, Pulse-Fi shows promise in measuring respiration rates, opening doors for applications in sleep apnea diagnosis and other conditions.
Remarkably, the system maintained accuracy at distances up to three meters (nearly 10 feet), overcoming a key limitation of earlier WiFi-based health monitoring systems.
As researcher Nayan Bhatia explained, “Our results show this works in everyday environments, without expensive equipment or strict positioning.”
The findings, presented at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT), highlight a new frontier where connectivity infrastructure becomes a vital health ally.
With continued refinement, Pulse-Fi could transform how we think of WiFi: not just as a tool for communication, but as a silent guardian of well-being in our homes and workplaces.
Article written by Neetika Walter
02/09/2025
Source:
Interesting Engineering
https://interestingengineering.com/health/wifi-heart-rate-monitoring-ucsc-pulsefi