Schulich students’ capstone project seeks to reassure new parents

For the first few days of a baby’s life, for some parents, every sleeping moment is met with anxiety: “Is the baby breathing? They haven’t moved for a while.”

Mom or Dad will then invariably sneak into the room and put their hand on the baby’s chest to affirm all is well.

A group of fourth-year Schulich School of Engineering students think they may have discovered a way to alleviate that stress, thanks in part to the same types of signals that connect your laptop to the internet.

It could be a game-changer for not only the world of pediatric care, but also for detecting and monitoring adult respiratory-health issues, an inexpensive way to monitor breathing issues for young and old.

“[This has] the potential to transform health care and daily life by enabling non-intrusive, continuous monitoring,” says Dr. Hatem Abou-Zeid, PhD, the group’s academic advisor.

“The students successfully integrated hardware, software, and artificial intelligence algorithms into a single system to develop a contactless breathing rate-sensing platform compatible with inexpensive commodity Wi-Fi routers,” says Abou-Zeid, who is also director of the WAVES Research Lab and an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering.

The team’s project was one of more than 100 on display at the 2025 Engineering Design Fair, showcasing the teamwork and innovation of soon-to-be Schulich graduates.

Detecting invisible waves

The team was tasked with finding an easier way to monitor breathing. It was led by Abou-Zeid and postdoctoral research associate Dr. Gholamreza Bakhshi, PhD, and included Maather Al Rawahi, Nurgul Akhshatayeva, Mohamed Elmuzamil Hassan, Mohammed Elsayed, Yousef ElShenaway, and Sudarshan Naicker.

The group, made up of electrical and software engineering students, started looking at the potential of using reflections of Wi-Fi signals as the invisible waves bounce around rooms, because it can be difficult to put traditional monitoring devices like sensors and chest straps on babies and elderly people.

“When you breathe, your chest moves just enough to disturb those waves,” says Al Rawahi. “Our system works like a ‘Wi-Fi radar’ that detects these tiny disruptions to estimate your breathing rate.”

The team developed a software-defined radio (SDR) system that sends out signals and listens for reflections from the environment. 

“The signals reflect off everything – walls, furniture and people,” says Akhshatayeva. “Our receiver collects these reflected signals and tracks how they change over time.”

Software filters clean up the signal so the system can focus on small, rhythmic changes caused by breathing, analyze the results and use algorithms to measure frequency, just like a parents or doctors counting each breath.

Building on the idea

The team says their system correctly detected breathing rate within one breath per minute in their test cases. They say it also preserves privacy as, unlike cameras and microphones, it doesn’t reveal personal details. Additionally, it is a low cost option.

“We already have a working proof of concept that shows it’s possible to estimate breathing rate using only the invisible Wi-Fi signals around us,” says Hassan. “To move toward a deployable and versatile prototype, a few improvements will still need to be made.”

The team believes the technology can be made to stand out even more by making it smaller – it’s about the size of a dinner plate currently – and they would also like it to have ability to monitor multiple people in a room.

“Addressing these challenges could pave the way for a deployable, commercial-grade, Wi-Fi router-compatible product that supports multiple users with enhanced reliability and extended range,” says ElSayed. “With continued development, this vision could become a reality within the next year or two.”

Abou-Zeid says the project could make a major difference in the lives of children and adults, alike, as researchers continue to look for ways to better detect and manage issues like sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and asthma.