IP - origin wireless

Discover the emerging technologies and diverse applications of wireless and mmWave sensing.

Wireless Sensing mmWave Technology Tracking and Navigation

Wireless Sensing Technology

Our team has developed a suite of advanced wireless sensing technology with many applications. Some selected samples are described below.

Human Identification

Origin’s technology proved the existence of radio biometrics. The wireless propagation around the human body is affected by its physical and biological characteristics. The human-affected wireless signals thus encode identity information, which can serve as a biometric to differentiate between people. By analyzing the pattern of the WiFi signal propagation in the form of channel state information (CSI), our technology can identify up to a dozen people, even through the walls, using a single WiFi transmitter and receiver pair. Human radio biometrics enable numerous applications in smart home and office environments as well as in smart automobiles.

View the seamless integration of Origin’s wireless sensing technology in automotive environments with our demo video showcasing human identification technology in cars.

“Radio Biometrics” paper

“Driver Driver Authentication for Smart Car Using Wireless Sensing” paper

“Wireless AI in Smart Car” paper

Child Presence Detection

Origin’s technology can be used to monitor the presence of occupants in a vehicle through motion and breathing detection, with high accuracy, low latency, and extensive coverage. Utilizing this technology, an unattended child inside a car can be detected with minimal false alarms.

Check out these videos showcasing this technology from Origin.

Sleep Monitoring

Origin’s AI technology enables future daily sleep monitoring in a ubiquitous, noninvasive, and contactless manner, without instrumenting the subject’s body or the bed through WiFi. It can effectively and accurately extract the breathing pattern from the radio signals based on a statistical model that accounts for all reflecting and scattering multipaths. By further analyzing the variability of the breath pattern, it can recognize sleep stages and assess the quality of sleep with comparable performance with the medical gold standard: polysomnography (PSG).

“Ambient Radio Signal Sleep Monitoring via Ambient Radio Signals” paper

Fall Detection

Falls are a major cause of injury/death in adults aged above 65 years. Origin’s AI technology presents a fall-detection system to identify a fall event and alert emergency services/caregivers. It can passively estimate the speed of indoor movements using our statistical multipath model-based approach. The environment-independent speed information and extracted acceleration patterns can be analyzed to distinguish falls from other routine activities. Our fall-detection technology attains a high detection accuracy.

“DeFall” paper

Gait Recognition

Gait, an individual’s way of walking, is increasingly perceived as not only an essential vital sign but also an effective biometric marker. Origin Research developed the first system that monitors and recognizes an individual’s gait through the walls via wireless radios. It passively and unobtrusively monitors an individual’s gait speed by a single pair of commodity WiFi transceivers without requiring the user to wear any device or walk on a restricted walkway. It automatically identifies stable walking periods, extracts physically plausible and environmentally irrelevant speed features, and accordingly recognizes a subject’s gait. Built upon a distinct rich-scattering multipath model, it can capture one’s gait speed when one is >10 meters away behind the walls.

“GaitWay: Monitoring and Recognizing Gait Speed Through the Walls” paper

mmWave Technology

Millimeter wave (mmWave) refers to a range of radio frequencies typically between 30 GHz and 300 GHz on the electromagnetic spectrum. This technology has gained significant attention in recent years in the realm of wireless communications due to its potential to enable ultra-fast data transmission speeds and support for massive connectivity in various applications such as 5G cellular networks, high-speed wireless internet, and short-range communication systems. In addition to its applications in communication, mmWave technology also holds promise for sensing applications. Origin Research has explored a wide range of mmWave-based applications, leveraging its unique characteristics, such as the high spatial resolution and large bandwidth, to enable accurate and reliable sensing in diverse environments and scenarios.

mmWave Imaging

mmWave sensing can generate high-resolution images of objects or scenes by measuring the time delay and intensity of reflected signals. This capability makes it suitable for imaging and further applications such as security screening, industrial inspection, and automotive radar systems for detecting obstacles and pedestrians.

Origin Research presents a super-resolution imaging system toward an mmWave camera by reusing a single commodity 60 GHz WiFi radio. The system’s core contribution is a super-resolution imaging algorithm that breaks the resolution limits by leveraging all available information at both the transmitter and receiver sides. Based on the MUSIC algorithm, Origin Research devises a novel technique of joint transmitter smoothing, which jointly uses the transmit and receive arrays to boost the spatial resolution while not sacrificing the aperture of the antenna array. Built upon this core, Origin Research designs and implements a functional system on commodity 60 GHz WiFi chipsets.

“mmEye” paper

Check out this video showcasing mmWave imaging with Origin Wireless, as the technology detects human motion by walking back and forth.

mmWave Vital Sign Monitoring

mmWave can detect subtle physiological signals such as heartbeat and respiration by analyzing the variations in reflected mmWave signals caused by body movements. This enables noncontact vital signs monitoring in healthcare applications, allowing for continuous patient monitoring without the need for intrusive sensors.

Origin Research proposes a calibration-free remote vital sign monitoring system that can detect stationary/nonstationary users and estimate the respiration rates (RRs) as well as heart rates (HRs) built upon a commercial 60 GHz WiFi. The design of ViMo consists of two key components. The first component is an adaptive object detector that can identify static objects, stationary human subjects, and humans in motion without any calibration. The second component is a robust HR estimator, which eliminates the respiration signal from the phase of the channel impulse response (CIR) to remove the interference of the harmonics from breathing and adopts dynamic programming (DP) to resist the random measurement noise.

“ViMo Multi-person Vital Sign Monitoring” paper

“mmHRV: Contactless Heart Rate Variability Monitoring using Millimeter-Wave Radio” paper

Check out this video showing vital sign monitoring of multiple people.

Keystroke Recognition with mmWave

The keyboard acts as one of the most commonly used mediums for human–computer interaction. Today, massive internet-of-things (IoT) devices are designed without a physical keyboard as they go tiny but are almost all equipped with a wireless module for networks. Origin Research enables mmKey, a universal virtual keyboard using wireless signals, which would allow a typing interface for tiny IoT devices or serve as a portable alternative to the unwieldy physical keyboards. It is the first universal virtual keyboard system using a single millimeter-wave (mmWave) radio. By leveraging the unique advantages of mmWave signals, mmKey converts any flat surface, with a printed paper keyboard, into an effective typing medium. mmKey enables concurrent keystrokes and supports multiple keyboard layouts (e.g., computer keyboard, piano keyboard, or phone keypad). Origin Research designs a novel signal processing pipeline to detect, segment, separate, and recognize keystrokes. mmKey does not need any training except for a minimal one-time effort of only three key presses for keyboard calibration upon the initial setup. Origin Research prototypes mmKey using a commodity 802.11ad/ay chipset, customized to support radar-like operations and evaluate it with different keyboard layouts under various settings.

View mmKey paper

View a demo of how Origin’s mmWave technology can detect keystrokes from a universal virtual keyboard.

Handwriting Recognition with mmWave

Origin’s mmWave technology can also be used for handwriting tracking and recognition, revolutionizing interaction and accessibility. The ability to track handwriting on any flat surface can expand the interaction space beyond today’s touch screens and assist future smart environments.

Origin Research introduces mmWrite, the first millimeter-accuracy handwriting tracking and recognition system using a single commodity millimeter wave radio. mmWrite captures signals reflected off a writing object and employs a pipeline of signal processing to reproduce the moving trajectory. While digital beamforming helps to extract spatial information, background subtraction and Doppler domain analysis enable the isolation of writing objects from static objects in the environment. Further, enhanced radar target detection and localization techniques such as 3D-CFAR, clutter mapping, and subsample interpolation facilitate fine-grained localization of a moving target.

“mmWrite” paper

Tracking and Navigation

Centimeter-Accuracy Tracking with Radio

Indoor positioning is challenging due to signal distortion from multipath effects in enclosed spaces. To address this, Origin Research uses time-reversal (TR) technology, leveraging multipath for precise positioning. TR technology identifies location-specific multipath profiles in scattered environments, creating the unique spatial-focusing effect that focuses the transmitted energy precisely at the intended location. Origin Research’s tracking system uses TR’s spatial focusing for centimeter-level accuracy with just a single antenna pair, even in non-line-of-sight. This precision enables various location-dependent services and has wide application potential.

“A Time-Reversal Paradigm for Indoor Positioning System” paper

Centimeter-Accuracy Tracking with WiFi

Leveraging merely commercial WiFi, Origin Research achieves centimeter-level indoor tracking—even with limited bandwidth and in non-line-of-sight conditions—by utilizing channel state information (CSI). CSI offers detailed insights into wave propagation. In our approach, we collect CSIs at various points and build a database. During operation, we compare real-time CSIs to our database using time-reversal resonating strength (TRRS), enhancing bandwidth by aggregating data from multiple WiFi bands or antennas and correcting phase distortions. Matching these TRRS values against a threshold enables precise location identification.

“Indoor Global Positioning System with Centimeter Accuracy Using Wi-Fi” paper

“Achieving Centimeter-Accuracy Indoor Localization on WiFi Platforms” paper

Infrastructure-Free Indoor Tracking with Submeter Accuracy

Origin Research introduced the Infrastructure-free Indoor Tracking system with submeter accuracy. A WiFi transmitter sends a beacon signal to receivers, which then update their positions to a controller for real-time tracking. It leverages the time-reversal resonating effect for distance estimation and incorporates gyroscope and accelerometer data for directional insights. It also uses floorplan information to correct estimation errors, similar to landmark-based correction. Its independence from premapping makes it adaptable to environmental changes, offering a robust solution for indoor tracking challenges.

“WiBall” paper

RIM: RF-Based Inertial Measurement

Inertial measurements, essential for various mobile applications, traditionally rely on sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes, which are prone to accumulating significant errors. Origin Research introduced RIM, an RF-based inertial measurement system that transforms a standard WiFi device into an inertial measurement unit (IMU) capable of precisely tracking movement, direction, and rotation with just a single, arbitrarily positioned access point (AP), even if its location is not known. To our knowledge, RIM is the pioneering approach to utilize RF signals for inertial estimation, showcasing remarkable accuracy. This breakthrough paves the way for new applications in accurate and reliable motion sensing, such as indoor tracking, digital handwriting recognition, and mobile gaming, revolutionizing traditional inertial measurement methods.

“RF-based Inertial Measurement” paper

EasiTrack: Accurate Indoor Tracking Made Easy and Scalable

Origin Research developed a real-time indoor tracking system that delivers decimeter-level accuracy with just a single, unconfigured commodity WiFi access point (AP), functioning effectively in both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight conditions. It is designed to effortlessly scale to large buildings and support an unlimited number of users virtually without cost.

“EasiTrack” paper

Mobile Devices (IMU) without Radio App/Map with Submeter-Accuracy

Origin Research innovatively employs inertial measurement unit (IMU) data, bypassing the need for wireless signal reliance, to build a practical indoor tracking system with submeter accuracy. It estimates the speed and direction of pedestrians based on readings of accelerometers and gyroscopes, which are commonly found in smartphones and handheld devices, eliminating the requirement for additional infrastructure. Combined with a map-augmented probabilistic approach, it achieves the capability to track a pedestrian carrying an IMU-enabled device with remarkable submeter precision, presenting a robust solution for indoor and complex environments where such signals may be unreliable or unavailable.