Home Health WiFi signals can measure heart rate—no wearables needed Engineers prove their technique is effective even with the lowest-cost WiFi devices Computer Science and Engineering Ph.D. student Nayan Bhatia demonstrates Pulse-Fi, technology that uses WiFi signals to measure a person's heart rate. Photos by Erika Cardema/UC Santa Cruz
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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.
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