Traditionally, measuring heart rate requires some sort of wearable device, whether that be a smartwatch or hospital-grade machinery. But new research from engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows how the signal from a household Wi-Fi 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 Wi-Fi-based health monitoring technology in their homes. The team proved their technique works with low-cost Wi-Fi devices, demonstrating its usefulness for low resource settings.

A study demonstrating the technology, which the researchers have coined “Pulse-Fi,” was published in the 2025 21st International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT)