Jessica Sanson

Jessica Sanson, Rahul C. Shah, Valerio Frascolla

Human Presence Detection (HPD) is key to enable intelligent power management and security features in everyday devices. In this paper we propose the first HPD solution that leverages monostatic Wi-Fi sensing and detects user position using only the built-in Wi-Fi hardware of a device, with no need for external devices, access points, or additional sensors. In contrast, existing HPD solutions for laptops require external dedicated sensors which add cost and complexity, or rely on camera-based approaches that introduce significant privacy concerns. We herewith introduce the Range-Filtered Doppler Spectrum (RF-DS), a novel Wi-Fi sensing technique for presence estimation that enables both range-selective and temporally windowed detection of user presence. By applying targeted range-area filtering in the Channel Impulse Response (CIR) domain before Doppler analysis, our method focuses processing on task-relevant spatial zones, significantly reducing computational complexity. In addition, the use of temporal windows in the spectrum domain provides greater estimator stability compared to conventional 2D Range-Doppler detectors. Furthermore, we propose an adaptive multi-rate processing framework that dynamically adjusts Channel State Information (CSI) sampling rates-operating at low frame rates (10Hz) during idle periods and high rates (100Hz) only when motion is detected. To our knowledge, this is the first low-complexity solution for occupancy detection using monostatic Wi-Fi sensing on a built-in Wi-Fi network interface controller (NIC) of a commercial off-the-shelf laptop that requires no external network infrastructure or specialized sensors. Our solution can scale across different environments and devices without calibration or retraining.

Jessica Sanson, Rahul C. Shah, Maximilian Pinaroc et al.

We present LiveSense - a cross-platform that transforms a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Wi-Fi Network Interface Card (NIC) on a laptop into a centimeter-level Range-Doppler sensor while preserving simultaneous communication capability. The laptops are equipped with COTS Intel AX211 (Wi-Fi 6E) or Intel BE201 (Wi-Fi 7) NICs. LiveSense can (i) Extract fully-synchronized channel state information (CSI) at >= 40 Hz, (ii) Perform time-phase alignment and self-interference cancellation on-device, and (iii) Provide a real-time stream of range, Doppler, subcarrier magnitude/phase and annotated video frames to a Python/Qt Graphical User Interface (GUI). The demo will showcase the ability to detect (i) Distance and radial velocity of attendees within a few meters of the device, (ii) Micro-motion (respiration), and (iii) Hand-gesture ranging. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever demo to obtain accurate range information of targets from commercial Wi-Fi, despite the limited 160 MHz bandwidth.

Jessica Sanson, Rahul C. Shah, Maximilian Pinaroc et al.

This paper presents, for the first time, a method to extract both range and Doppler information from commercial Wi-Fi Channel State Information (CSI) using a monostatic (single transceiver) setup. Utilizing the CSI phase in Wi-Fi sensing from a Network Interface Card (NIC) not designed for full-duplex operation is challenging due to (1) Hardware asynchronization, which introduces significant phase errors, and (2) Proximity of transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) antennas, which creates strong coupling that overwhelms the motion signal of interest. We propose a new signal processing approach that addresses both challenges via three key innovations: Time offset cancellation, Phase alignment correction, and Tx/Rx coupling mitigation. Our method achieves cm-level accuracy in range and Doppler estimation for moving targets, validated using a commercial Intel Wi-Fi AX211 NIC. Our results show successful detection and tracking of moving objects in realistic environments, establishing the feasibility of high-precision sensing using standard Wi-Fi packet communications and off-the-shelf hardware without requiring any modification or specialized full-duplex capabilities.