Towards Low-Cost, Ubiquitous High-Time Resolution Sensing for Terrestrial Spectrum

Spectrum utilization has become increasingly fragmented and diverse, with millions of devices supporting multiple protocols and use cases. A smartphone today uses LTE, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi simultaneously, spanning multiple GHz of spectrum. In such an environment, comprehensive knowledge of spectrum usage can help in ushering in better networked system design, unified control, and provide new ways of understanding cyber-physical interactions. A versatile spectrum sensor that can monitor all utilized bands quickly and at low cost is a crucial enabler for such applications. Such a sensor is difficult to realize due to the vast size of the terrestrial spectrum and the necessity to keep up with fleeting wireless communication signals in innumerable bands. Additionally, it needs to be inexpensive and suitable for mass deployment. We introduce a new paradigm, in which the spectrum sensor can "sweep" over a wide band of spectrum quickly and extract useful information, such as occupancy and protocol type. The system, dubbed SweepSense, is prototyped on inexpensive hardware and opens up opportunities for new applications that were previously intractable, even with expensive solutions.