IEEE Internet of Things Journal · Apr 13, 2026

Millimeter-Wave Radar for Remote Health Monitoring: Analyzing Digital Biomarkers for Real-Time Insights

By Doğu E, Jones JM, Alomainy A et al.

Millimetre-wave (mm-wave) radar technology holds transformative potential in healthcare by enabling continuous, unobtrusive health monitoring, thereby supporting preventative medicine and promoting independent living. Existing remote monitoring approaches, such as wearable devices and mobile applications, face challenges related to user compliance, discomfort, and maintenance, limiting their effectiveness for long-term deployment. This paper presents a mm-wave radar-based system evaluated through a six-month proof-of-concept study in a residential care apartment, demonstrating its real-world feasibility and reliability for continuous long-term home monitoring. The system extracts behavioural parameters and digital biomarkers including room occupancy, movement patterns, gait speed, and activity levels, providing real-time, privacy-preserving insights into an individual’s daily routines and mobility without requiring user interaction. Over the six-month period, the radar sensors successfully tracked mean daily distances moved of 38.6 m in the bedroom and 39.1 m in the living room, while gait speed distributions revealed temporal and spatial variations, with daily median speeds ranging from 0.25–0.55 m/s depending on the time of day. The mean of the daily maximum gait speeds was 0.78 m/s. These findings highlight the system’s capacity for reliable, long-term operation in real-world conditions and its potential as a scalable, maintenance-free solution for continuous health and well-being monitoring in older adults.

doi.org/10.1109/jiot.2026.3680222Open access, accepted manuscriptBiomarkers