Enabling pervasive WiFi devices with non-contact sensing capability is an important topic in the field of integrated sensing and communication. Doppler effect has been widely exploited to estimate targets’ velocity from wireless signals. However, the separation of signal sources and receivers complicates the relationship between Doppler frequency shift (DFS) and target velocity in WiFi-based non-contact sensing systems. In contrast to existing works that rely on either approximated relations or coarse-grained information such as whether a target is moving toward or away from WiFi transceivers, this paper investigates rigorously the dependency of velocity estimation accuracy on target locations and headings in WiFi sensing systems. The theoretical insights allow us to derive a closed-form solution and understand the fundamental limitation of velocity estimation. To optimize velocity estimation performance, we devise a receiving device selection scheme that dynamically chooses the optimal set of receivers among multiple available WiFi devices. A prototype real-time target tracking system has been implemented using commodity WiFi devices. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed system outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in velocity estimation and tracking, and is able to achieve $9.38cm/s$ , 13.42°, $31.08cm$ median errors in speed, heading and location estimation amongst experiments conducted in three indoor environments with three device placements and eight human subjects over 15 trajectories.

With the proliferation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, acoustic sensing attracts significant attention in recent years. It exploits acoustic transceivers such as microphones and speakers beyond their primary functions, namely recording and playing, to enable novel applications and new user experiences. In this paper, we present the first systematic survey on recent advances in ubiquitous acoustic sensing using commodity IoT hardware with a frequency range below 24 kHz. We propose a general framework that categorizes main building blocks of acoustic sensing systems. This framework encompasses three layers, i.e., device, core technique, and application. The device layer includes basic hardware components, acoustic platforms, as well as the air-borne and structure-borne channel characteristics. The core technique layer encompasses key mechanisms to generate acoustic signals (waveforms) and to extract useful temporal, spatial, and spectral information from received signals. The application layer builds upon the functions offered by the core techniques to realize different acoustic sensing applications. We highlight unique challenges due to the limitations of physical devices and acoustic channels and how they are mitigated or overcame by core processing techniques and application-specific solutions. Finally, research opportunities and future directions are discussed to spawn further in-depth investigation on IoTenabled ubiquitous acoustic sensing.

Video, as a key driver in the global explosion of digital information, can create tremendous benefits for human society. Governments and enterprises are deploying innumerable cameras for a variety of applications, e.g., law enforcement, emergency management, traffic control, and security surveillance, all facilitated by video analytics (VA). This trend is spurred by the rapid advancement of deep learning (DL), which enables more precise models for object classification, detection, and tracking. Meanwhile, with the proliferation of Internet-connected devices, massive amounts of data are generated daily, overwhelming the cloud. Edge computing, an emerging paradigm that moves workloads and services from the network core to the network edge, has been widely recognized as a promising solution. The resulting new intersection, edge video analytics (EVA), begins to attract widespread attention. Nevertheless, only a few loosely-related surveys exist on this topic. The basic concepts of EVA (e.g., definition, architectures) were not fully elucidated due to the rapid development of this domain. To fill these gaps, we provide a comprehensive survey of the recent efforts on EVA. In this paper, we first review the fundamentals of edge computing, followed by an overview of VA. EVA systems and their enabling techniques are discussed next. In addition, we introduce prevalent frameworks and datasets to aid future researchers in the development of EVA systems. Finally, we discuss existing challenges and foresee future research directions. We believe this survey will help readers comprehend the relationship between VA and edge computing, and spark new ideas on EVA.

Device-free indoor localization and tracking using commercial millimeter wave radars have attracted much interest lately due to their non-intrusive nature and high spatial resolution. However, it is challenging to achieve high tracking accuracy due to rich multipath reflection and occlusion in indoor environments. Static objects with non-negligible reflectance of mmWave signals interact with moving human subjects and generate time-varying multipath ghosts and shadow ghosts, which can be easily confused as real subjects. To characterize the complex interactions, we first develop a geometric model that estimates the location of multipath ghosts given the locations of humans and static reflectors. Based on this model, the locations of static reflectors that form a reflection map are automatically estimated from received radar signals as a single person traverses the environment along arbitrary trajectories. The reflection map allows for the elimination of multipath and shadow ghost interference as well as the augmentation of weakly reflected human subjects in occluded areas. The proposed environment-aware multi-person tracking system can generate reflection maps with a mean error of 15.5cm and a 90-percentile error of 30.3cm, and achieve multi-person tracking accuracy with a mean error of 8.6cm and a 90-percentile error of 17.5cm, in four representative indoor spaces with diverse subjects using a single mmWave radar.

Continuous monitoring of human vital signs using non-contact mmWave radars is attractive due to their ability to penetrate garments and operate under different lighting conditions. Unfortunately, most prior research requires subjects to stay at a fixed distance from radar sensors and to remain still during monitoring. These restrictions limit the applications of radar vital sign monitoring in real life scenarios. In this article, we address these limitations and present Pi-ViMo, a non-contact P hysiology- i nspired Robust Vi tal Sign Mo nitoring system, using mmWave radars. We first derive a multi-scattering point model for the human body, and introduce a coherent combining of multiple scatterings to enhance the quality of estimated chest-wall movements. It enables vital sign estimations of subjects at any location in a radar’s field of view (FoV). We then propose a template matching method to extract human vital signs by adopting physical models of respiration and cardiac activities. The proposed method is capable to separate respiration and heartbeat in the presence of micro-level random body movements (RBM) when a subject is at any location within the field of view of a radar. Experiments in a radar testbed show average respiration rate errors of 6% and heart rate errors of 11.9% for the stationary subjects, and average errors of 13.5% for respiration rate and 13.6% for heart rate for subjects under different RBMs.