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Wi-Fi recognition: What other information can Wi-Fi provide?

Researchers are looking at how Wi-Fi signals can be used beyond mere Internet connection.

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Quantumrun Foresight
February 23, 2023

Insight summary

Since the early 2000s, Wi-Fi was only employed to connect devices. However, it is progressively being utilized as a radar due to its ability to change and adapt to environmental changes. By sensing the disruption to Wi-Fi signals caused when an individual enters the communication path between a wireless router and a smart device, it is possible to determine that person's location and size.

Wi-Fi recognition context

A radio wave is an electromagnetic signal designed to transmit data through the air over relatively long distances. Radio waves are sometimes referred to as Radio Frequency (RF) signals. These signals vibrate at a very high frequency, allowing them to travel through the atmosphere like waves in water.

Radio waves have been used for many years and provide the means by which music is broadcast over FM radios and how videos are sent to televisions. In addition, radio waves are the primary means of transmitting data over a wireless network. With widespread Wi-Fi signals, these radio waves can detect people, objects, and movements as far as the signal can broadcast, even through walls. The more smart home devices are added to networks, the smoother and more effective those transmissions will be.

An area that is increasingly being studied in Wi-Fi recognition is gesture recognition. According to the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM), Wi-Fi signal recognition of human gestures is possible because a gesture creates a time series of variations to the received raw signal. However, the primary difficulty in building a widespread gesture recognition system is that the relationship between each gesture and the series of signal variations is not always consistent. For example, the same gesture done in different locations or with different orientations produces entirely new signals (variations).

Disruptive impact

Applications for Wi-Fi sensing can help regulate heating and cooling based on how many people are present or even limit occupancy during a pandemic. More advanced antennas and machine learning can detect breathing rates and heartbeats. As such, researchers are testing how sensing Wi-Fi technologies can be used for medical studies.

For example, in 2017, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers found a way to wirelessly capture data on sleep patterns from a patient's home. Their laptop-sized device uses radio waves to bounce off a person and then analyzes the signals with a smart algorithm to accurately decode the patient's sleep patterns.

Rather than being restricted to observing a person's sleep in an overnight lab every few months, this new device would let experts monitor someone for hours or weeks at a time. In addition to helping diagnose and learn more about sleep disorders, it could also be used to study how drugs and illnesses affect sleep quality. This RF system deciphers sleep stages with 80 percent accuracy by using a combination of information on breathing, pulse, and movements, which is about the same level of precision as lab-based EEG (electroencephalogram) tests.

The increase in popularity and use cases of Wi-Fi recognition has created a need for new standards. In 2024, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers will release a new 802.11 standard specifically for sensing rather than communication.

Implications of Wi-Fi recognition

Wider implications of Wi-Fi recognition may include:

Commercial centers and advertising firms using Wi-Fi to determine foot traffic and monitor location-specific consumer behavior and patterns.
Gesture recognition becoming more reliable as Wi-Fi systems learn to recognize movements and patterns more accurately. Advancements in this field will impact the way consumers interact with the devices around them.
Ever more smart devices integrating next-generation Wi-Fi recognition functionality into their designs that enable novel consumer use cases.
More research into how Wi-Fi recognition systems can be used to monitor health stats to support medical and smart wearables.
Increased medical research conducted solely based on Wi-Fi sensors and data, supporting remote diagnostics and treatments.
Increasing concerns about how Wi-Fi signals can be hacked to retrieve valuable medical and behavioral information.