Wireless sensing has been demonstrated to be capable of capturing rich information of human target ranging from coarse-grained daily activities, gestures to fine-grained vital signs. Various wireless signals have been recently exploited for sensing including WiFi, RFID, 60 GHz radar, and ultrasound. The key difference between wireless sensing and traditional sensor-based sensing is that the target does not need to be equipped with any sensors and the wireless signal itself is utilized to sense the context information of hu- mans. While promising in many aspects, critical issues still exist. These issues include (1) very limited sensing range due to the intrinsic nature of employing reflection signals for sensing, and (2) strong interference from other objects in the environment. This proposal explores the exciting opportunity of employing LoRa - the emerging wireless protocol designed for IoT device connections - to realize long-range wide-area wireless sensing.
This proposal seeks to address two fundamental issues associated with LoRa sensing and more generally with wireless sensing, moving wireless sensing one step closer to real-life adoption. Furthermore, another practical issue is that LoRa is originally designed for communication, and LoRa sensing and communication share the same spectrum and gateway, leading to mutual interference. Therefore, this proposal also addresses the impact of LoRa communication on LoRa sensing to make LoRa sensing coexist with communication for the future LoRa network.
Advisor: Jie Xiong