U.S. Scientists Turn Home Wi-Fi Routers Into Health Monitors That Monitor Heartbeat

Written by Fabio Lucas Carvalho

Published on 04/09/2025 at 07:18

Updated on 04/09/2025 at 07:19

Foto: Reprodução

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The Technology That Seemed Destined to Connect Devices Has Now Gained a New Purpose. Scientists at the University of California Have Shown That Home WiFi Can Monitor Heartbeats with Clinical Precision, Without Relying on Expensive Equipment or Wearable Devices.

Now home Wi-Fi can do more than stream videos. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have shown that it can also detect heartbeats. This innovation came with Pulse-Fi, a system that transforms common wireless signals into health monitors.

The researchers proved that a simple Wi-Fi transmitter and receiver can measure heart rate with clinical accuracy. This eliminates the need for smartwatches, chest straps, or hospital machines.

How Pulse-Fi Works

The technology leverages inexpensive hardware already present in homes and offices. Using machine learning algorithms, Pulse-Fi filters environmental noise and detects small changes caused by the heart.

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Wi-Fi with Beat

Heart rate is one of the most basic measures of health. It indicates levels of stress, hydration, and even fitness. Usually, it requires dedicated devices to be monitored. Pulse-Fi suggests that common routers could discreetly take on this role.

“We showed that this can work in normal environments, without special adjustments,” said Nayan Bhatia, a PhD student and one of the project leaders. Computer science professor Katia Obraczka coordinated the research.

Second Life for Wireless Signals

The principle is simple: radio frequency waves change as they pass through the human body. Each heartbeat generates small variations in these signals. The algorithms learned to identify this pattern by training with data from traditional oximeters.

To build the database, researchers set up experiments in the university’s Science and Engineering library. They compared Wi-Fi fluctuations with real measurements and taught the neural network to relate the two.

The team also validated the method with data collected by Brazilian scientists who used Raspberry Pi. This comparison confirmed the accuracy achieved by Pulse-Fi.

Beyond Heart Rate

The engineers are already working to make the system also track respiration. This could help diagnose issues such as sleep apnea. The initial results, still unpublished, are considered promising.

Another important discovery was the distance. Pulse-Fi managed to measure heartbeats accurately up to three meters away. Unlike previous methods, performance did not decline when the volunteer moved away from the router.

“What we saw was that distance made no difference, which was a challenge for other approaches,” said high school student Pranay Kocheta, who participated in the project through a science internship.

International Recognition

The results were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT) in 2025. The event brought together cutting-edge research in the connectivity sector.

With the publication, Pulse-Fi enters the debate on how wireless networks can be used beyond the internet. The proposal indicates a future where the same network connecting computers and mobile phones also monitors people’s health.

The study shows that invisible signals can gain new functions. Wi-Fi, present in almost every home, now also pulses along with the heart.

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U.S. Scientists Turn Home Wi-Fi Routers Into Health Monitors That Monitor Heartbeat

The Technology That Seemed Destined to Connect Devices Has Now Gained a New Purpose. Scientists at the University of California Have Shown That Home WiFi Can Monitor Heartbeats with Clinical Precision, Without Relying on Expensive Equipment or Wearable Devices.

How Pulse-Fi Works

Wi-Fi with Beat

Second Life for Wireless Signals

Beyond Heart Rate

International Recognition

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U.S. Scientists Turn Home Wi-Fi Routers Into Health Monitors That Monitor Heartbeat

The Technology That Seemed Destined to Connect Devices Has Now Gained a New Purpose. Scientists at the University of California Have Shown That Home WiFi Can Monitor Heartbeats with Clinical Precision, Without Relying on Expensive Equipment or Wearable Devices.

How Pulse-Fi Works

Wi-Fi with Beat

Second Life for Wireless Signals

Beyond Heart Rate

International Recognition

A giant half-ton ring fell in Kenya from space, and more than a year later, scientists still do not know where it came from.

Seen from space, an image taken by an astronaut shows an unlikely oasis in the Saudi Arabian desert, protected by a terrain that slows the advance of sand, surrounded by green circles, remnants of an extinct lake and nearly 10,000 years of preserved history.

In Botswana, a salt flat of up to 16,000 km² that was once an African megalake spends months as an absolute white desert, but during the rainy season it transforms into a shallow sea that reappears from nowhere and can be seen from space in the middle of southern Africa.

Bavarian archaeologists unearthed a medieval skeleton that had an articulated iron hand in place of its left arm, and the discovery reveals that doctors were already creating sophisticated prosthetics over 500 years ago.

Cell phones in schools: learn how a year after the ban, students and teachers are already noticing positive effects and recording improvements in academic performance with increased attention and active participation.

With 1,000 buses sent abroad, the Brazilian manufacturer consolidates the strength of national technology and takes on a leading role in public transportation across all of Latin America.

More than 1,500 Chinese workers transformed an entire railway station in just one night and reduced a 7-hour journey to 90 minutes with a high-speed line of 200 km/h.

JBL Flip Essential 3 SE is launched with 30W of power (20W + 10W), Bluetooth 5.4, Auracast for multiple connections, IP67 water and dust resistance, up to 12 hours of battery life, and a price of approximately R$ 660 in China.

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