See Through Walls with Wi-Fi

Fadel Adib and Dina Katabi

Can Wi- Fi Signals Extend Our Senses? Challenges in Designing Wi-Vi
Challenge #1: Flash Eect
Wi-Vi uses Wi-Fi signals to see through walls:
Detect and track human motion RF signals penetrate walls: T1 Measure sub-
Reect o objects on other side of wall nanosecond delays
Identify the number of moving humans and T2
Distinguish reectors by their arrival times
their relative locations
At low bandwidth: Use Multi-GHz bandwidth
Allows humans to communicate without a
Wall reection much stronger than reections coming from behind the wall
transmiWng device
Flash eect: wall reection saturates the ADC.
Through-wall gesture-based interface
Wi-Vi overcomes Flash by MIMO nulling
Applications: law enforcement, gaming, intrusion detection, etc. x x
Multi-antenna Wi-Fi Transmitter = -h2 and = h1
Signal is Zero at undesired receiver
nodes can pre-code
h2
transmi_ed signal to h1
avoid interference Flash Eect is Removed
Desired receiver Undesired receiver Non-static reectors survive
Tracking Human Motion
Challenge #2: Tracking Wi-Vi uses Inverse Synthetic Aperture
Reections from Dierent Moving Humans Overlap: Traditional systems:
Correlated: reections of same signal
One Person Direction of Motion Treat time samples as spatial
100

Spatially un-correlated: dierent angles samples of antenna array

Antenna Array
80
DC line
60 1 (static objects) elements
40
Angle (degrees)

20

Use Spatially Smoothed MUSIC algorithm to -20

distinguish -40 Angle of Arrival

Apply standard antenna
Automatically identify # of moving objects
-60

-80
1
array equations:
by computing spatial variance of output
-100 Bulky antenna arrays (eg. 8 foot long)
0 1 2 3 4
Time (seconds)
5 6 7
Angle of motion
track angle of arrival of reection Wi-Vi
Two Persons 100
Three Persons
100
80

60
2 80

60
1
2 Empirical Results

Building Materials
40 40
Human Detection
Angle (degrees)
Angle (degrees)

20 20 100 100 100 100

Detected 100 87.5
0 1 2 3

Accuracy (%)
0 0 Actual 80
-20 -20
0 100% 0% 0% 0% 60
-40 -40
-60
1 0% 100% 0% 0% 40
-60
-80 2 0% 0% 85% 15% 20
1 -80 3
-100 3 0% 0% 10% 90% 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 -100 Free Space Tinted Glass 1.75" Solid 6" Hollow 8" Concrete
Time (seconds) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time (seconds) Wood Door Wall