RT-VSS: In-House Ray Tracing for Vital Signs Sensing in the FR3 Band
Vital Signs Sensing, enabled by the evolution of wireless communications, is inherently challenging as the chest's micro-Doppler signatures can be corrupted by multipath, body movement and noise. Additionally, the prospects of the Frequency Range (FR) 3 band, spanning 7-24 GHz, are compelling due to centimeter-scale wavelength improving phase sensitivity to chest motion, while its abundant bandwidth and rich multipath enhance temporal and spatial diversity. In this paper, we validate the feasibility of using cellular communications in the FR3 band to monitor a human's breathing and heartbeat in an indoor environment. Using Blender to model physiologically accurate vital-signs signals as ground truth and Sionna Ray Tracing simulations, we find that it is feasible to extract breathing and heartbeat waveforms at FR3 frequencies. Furthermore, we perform a comparative analysis of ISAC performance against representative sub-6 GHz (FR1) and mmWave (FR2) frequencies, indicating the utility of the study across the frequency bands.