One or more aspects of the disclosure relate to monitoring a resting subject's respiration and heart rate through an impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) radar in a noninvasive fashion, in order to infer the corresponding health status including heart rate and respiration rate. Any other reflectance technology may be used. These two cardiopulmonary vital signs are derived based on the processing of recorded waveforms that are collected by the IR-UWB radar or any other reflectance technology system, after getting reflected-off the resting subject's body or relevant body part. A novel algorithm that processes the recorded waveforms is proposed to extract these vitals' signals and, accordingly, estimate their rates. This algorithm includes at least three major stages: i) noise reduction, ii) respiration rate estimation, and iii) heart rate estimation. Furthermore, the algorithm addresses the effects of harmonics and intermodulation between the breathing and heartbeat signals without requiring the implementation of filters.
