The team led by Professor Katia Obraczka tested the device on 118 volunteers. Result: after only five seconds of analysis, Pulse-Fi measured the heart rate with an accuracy equivalent to that of an oximeter, with a margin of error barely half a bit per minute. The more the system observes the pulse, the more the accuracy improves, that the participants are seated, standing, elongated or in motion.
Stethoscopes waves
To achieve this result, researchers did not use specialized equipment. They relied on very accessible components: ESP32 chips sold between $ 5 and $ 10 and Raspberry Pi around $ 30. “” Our results show that this can work in everyday environments, without any particular positioning or expensive equipment “Summaged Nayan Bhatia. According to the team, the use of commercial routers would further improve performance.
The functioning of Pulse-Fi is based on a well-known physical property but rarely exploited for health: the radio waves emitted by a Wi-Fi device are spreading in space and interact with any object or body that they meet. When they pass through a human being, they are partially absorbed and deflected. A heartbeat, as imperceptible as it is, slightly modifies this signal. Taken in isolation, this change is drowned in an ambient noise made of movements, temperature variations or even air trips.
This is where artificial intelligence comes in. The researchers have designed an algorithm capable of distinguishing these tiny variations linked to the heart rate from the rest of the disturbances. To train it, they collected a large volume of comparative data: on the one hand, fluctuations in Wi-Fi signals recorded by their sensors; On the other, the heart rate measures provided by traditional oximeters. By correlating these two sets, the system has learned to recognize the specific signature of the heart, as an imprint.
Beyond the simple measure of the pulse, the team wants to go further. The first tests show that Pulse-Fi could also monitor the respiratory rate, a precious data to detect disorders such as sleep apnea. Another discovery: precision remains stable up to three meters between the person and the device, which opens the way to non -intrusive domestic applications.
Research was presented at the IEEE (DCOSS-IOT) 2025 conference. If the technology is only in beginnings, it illustrates how trivial equipment could ultimately turn into health assistants. In a world where medical surveillance is often based on connected objects or expensive clinical devices, Pulse-Fi offers another much more affordable path without sacrificing the statements.
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