Tool release: gathering 802.11n traces with channel state information
22 Jan 2011-Vol. 41, Iss: 1, pp 53-53
TL;DR: The measurement setup comprises the customized versions of Intel's close-source firmware and open-source iwlwifi wireless driver, userspace tools to enable these measurements, access point functionality for controlling both ends of the link, and Matlab scripts for data analysis.
Abstract: We are pleased to announce the release of a tool that records detailed measurements of the wireless channel along with received 802.11 packet traces. It runs on a commodity 802.11n NIC, and records Channel State Information (CSI) based on the 802.11 standard. Unlike Receive Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values, which merely capture the total power received at the listener, the CSI contains information about the channel between sender and receiver at the level of individual data subcarriers, for each pair of transmit and receive antennas.Our toolkit uses the Intel WiFi Link 5300 wireless NIC with 3 antennas. It works on up-to-date Linux operating systems: in our testbed we use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with the 2.6.36 kernel. The measurement setup comprises our customized versions of Intel's close-source firmware and open-source iwlwifi wireless driver, userspace tools to enable these measurements, access point functionality for controlling both ends of the link, and Matlab (or Octave) scripts for data analysis. We are releasing the binary of the modified firmware, and the source code to all the other components.
Citations
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07 Sep 2015
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Abstract: Keystroke privacy is critical for ensuring the security of computer systems and the privacy of human users as what being typed could be passwords or privacy sensitive information. In this paper, we show for the first time that WiFi signals can also be exploited to recognize keystrokes. The intuition is that while typing a certain key, the hands and fingers of a user move in a unique formation and direction and thus generate a unique pattern in the time-series of Channel State Information (CSI) values, which we call CSI-waveform for that key. In this paper, we propose a WiFi signal based keystroke recognition system called WiKey. WiKey consists of two Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) WiFi devices, a sender (such as a router) and a receiver (such as a laptop). The sender continuously emits signals and the receiver continuously receives signals. When a human subject types on a keyboard, WiKey recognizes the typed keys based on how the CSI values at the WiFi signal receiver end. We implemented the WiKey system using a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND WiFi router and a Lenovo X200 laptop. WiKey achieves more than 97.5\% detection rate for detecting the keystroke and 96.4% recognition accuracy for classifying single keys. In real-world experiments, WiKey can recognize keystrokes in a continuously typed sentence with an accuracy of 93.5%.
493 citations
TL;DR: RT-Fall exploits the phase and amplitude of the fine-grained Channel State Information accessible in commodity WiFi devices, and for the first time fulfills the goal of segmenting and detecting the falls automatically in real-time, which allows users to perform daily activities naturally and continuously without wearing any devices on the body.
Abstract: This paper presents the design and implementation of RT-Fall, a real-time, contactless, low-cost yet accurate indoor fall detection system using the commodity WiFi devices. RT-Fall exploits the phase and amplitude of the fine-grained Channel State Information (CSI) accessible in commodity WiFi devices, and for the first time fulfills the goal of segmenting and detecting the falls automatically in real-time, which allows users to perform daily activities naturally and continuously without wearing any devices on the body. This work makes two key technical contributions. First, we find that the CSI phase difference over two antennas is a more sensitive base signal than amplitude for activity recognition, which can enable very reliable segmentation of fall and fall-like activities. Second, we discover the sharp power profile decline pattern of the fall in the time-frequency domain and further exploit the insight for new feature extraction and accurate fall segmentation/detection. Experimental results in four indoor scenarios demonstrate that RT-fall consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art approach WiFall with 14 percent higher sensitivity and 10 percent higher specificity on average.
464 citations
Cites background from "Tool release: gathering 802.11n tra..."
...H.Wang, D. Zhang, J. Ma, Y. Wang, and S. Li are with the Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies, Ministry of Education, and School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China....
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12 Sep 2016
TL;DR: The intuition is that due to the differences in gaits of different people, the WiFi signal reflected by a walking human generates unique variations in the Channel State Information on the WiFi receiver, so WifiU is proposed, which uses commercial WiFi devices to capture fine-grained gait patterns to recognize humans.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose WifiU, which uses commercial WiFi devices to capture fine-grained gait patterns to recognize humans. The intuition is that due to the differences in gaits of different people, the WiFi signal reflected by a walking human generates unique variations in the Channel State Information (CSI) on the WiFi receiver. To profile human movement using CSI, we use signal processing techniques to generate spectrograms from CSI measurements so that the resulting spectrograms are similar to those generated by specifically designed Doppler radars. To extract features from spectrograms that best characterize the walking pattern, we perform autocorrelation on the torso reflection to remove imperfection in spectrograms. We evaluated WifiU on a dataset with 2,800 gait instances collected from 50 human subjects walking in a room with an area of 50 square meters. Experimental results show that WifiU achieves top-1, top-2, and top-3 recognition accuracies of 79.28%, 89.52%, and 93.05%, respectively.
447 citations
Cites methods from "Tool release: gathering 802.11n tra..."
...11n protocol as the sender and a Thinkpad X200 laptop with the Intel 5300 wireless card (of about 10 USD) as the receiver to collect CSI measurements using the Linux CSI tool [11]....
[...]
References
More filters
30 Aug 2010
TL;DR: It is shown that, for the first time, wireless packet delivery can be accurately predicted for commodity 802.11 NICs from only the channel measurements that they provide, and the rate prediction is as good as the best rate adaptation algorithms for 802.
Abstract: RSSI is known to be a fickle indicator of whether a wireless link will work, for many reasons. This greatly complicates operation because it requires testing and adaptation to find the best rate, transmit power or other parameter that is tuned to boost performance. We show that, for the first time, wireless packet delivery can be accurately predicted for commodity 802.11 NICs from only the channel measurements that they provide. Our model uses 802.11n Channel State Information measurements as input to an OFDM receiver model we develop by using the concept of effective SNR. It is simple, easy to deploy, broadly useful, and accurate. It makes packet delivery predictions for 802.11a/g SISO rates and 802.11n MIMO rates, plus choices of transmit power and antennas. We report testbed experiments that show narrow transition regions (
697 citations
"Tool release: gathering 802.11n tra..." refers methods in this paper
...It works on up-to-date Linux operating systems: in our testbed we use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with the 2.6.36 kernel....
[...]
01 Oct 2001
TL;DR: The Internet is going mobile and wireless, perhaps quite soon, with a number of diverse technologies leading the charge, including, 3G cellular networks based on CDMA technology, a wide variety of what is deemed 2.5G cellular technologies (e.g., EDGE, GPRS and HDR), and IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs).
Abstract: At some point in the future, how far out we do not exactly know, wireless access to the Internet will outstrip all other forms of access bringing the freedom of mobility to the way we access the we...
615 citations
07 Jan 2010
TL;DR: This tutorial provides a brief introduction to multiple antenna techniques, and describes the two main classes of those techniques, spatial diversity and spatial multiplexing.
Abstract: The use of multiple antennas and MIMO techniques based on them is the key feature of 802.11n equipment that sets it apart from earlier 802.11a/g equipment. It is responsible for superior performance, reliability and range. In this tutorial, we provide a brief introduction to multiple antenna techniques. We describe the two main classes of those techniques, spatial diversity and spatial multiplexing. To ground our discussion, we explain how they work in 802.11n NICs in practice.
89 citations