WiFi signals can measure heart rate–no wearables needed

Summary

Key takeaways The Pulse-Fi system is highly accurate, achieving clinical-level heart rate monitoring with ultra low-cost WiFi devices, making it useful for low resource settings. The system works with the person in a variety of different positions and from up to 10 feet away. Heart rate is one of the most basic and important indicators of health, providing a snapshot into a person’s physical activity, stress and anxiety, hydration level, and more. Traditionally, measuring heart rate requires some sort of wearable device, whether that be a smart watch or hospital-grade machinery. But new research from engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows how the signal from a household WiFi device can be used for this crucial health monitoring with state-of-the-art accuracy—without the need for a wearable. Their proof of concept work demonstrates that one day, anyone could take advantage of this non-intrusive WiFi-based health monitoring technology in their homes. The team proved their technique works with low-cost WiFi devices, demonstrating its usefulness for low resource settings. A study demonstrating the technology, which the researchers have coined “Pulse-Fi,” was published in the proceedings of the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT). Measuring with WiFi Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Katia Obraczka and Ph.D. student Nayan Bhatia in the lab. A team of researchers at UC Santa Cruz’s Baskin School of Engineering that included Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Katia Obraczka, Ph.D. student Nayan Bhatia, and high school student and visiting researcher Pranay Kocheta designed a system for accurately measuring heart rate that combines low-cost WiFi devices with a machine learning algorithm. WiFi devices push out radio frequency waves into physical space around them and toward a receiving device, typically a computer or phone. As the waves pass through ob...