Leveraging MIMO-OFDM radio signals for device-free occupancy inference: system design and experiments

In device-free radio frequency (RF) body occupancy inference systems, RF signals encode information (e.g., body location, posture, activity) about moving targets (not instrumented) that alter the radio propagation in the surroundings of the RF link(s). Such systems are now getting more attention as they enable flexible location-based services for new smart scenarios (e.g., smart spaces, safety and security, assisted living) just using off-the-shelf wireless devices. The goal of this paper is to set the fundamental signal processing methods and tools for performance evaluation of passive occupancy inference problems that leverage on the analysis of physical layer (PHY) channel state information (CSI) obtained from multiple antennas (spatial domain) and carriers (frequency domain) jointly. To this aim, we consider here a multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) radio interface adopted in high-throughput WiFi networks such as IEEE 802.11n,ac. The proposed approach investigates at first relevant CSI features that are more sensitive to body presence; next, it proposes a space-frequency selection method based on principal component analysis (PCA). Considering an experimental case study with WiFi links, we show that the joint space- and frequency-domain processing of the radio signal quality indicators enable both detection and localization of two independent targets (i.e., human bodies) arbitrarily moving in the surroundings of the transmitter/receiver locations. Experiments are conducted using off-the-shelf WiFi devices configured to extract and process CSI over standard PHY preambles: performance analysis sets the best practices for system design and evaluation.