Spyglass: Directional Spectrum Sensing with Single-shot AoA Estimation and Virtual Arrays
This addresses the challenge of effective spectrum usage for wireless communication systems, though it is incremental in improving existing sensing methods.
The paper tackles the problem of spectrum sensing in dense wireless environments by introducing Spyglass, a system that estimates the Angle of Arrival (AoA) of signals in a single transmission with a median accuracy of 1.4° and separates simultaneous signals from multiple devices.
In this paper, we introduce Spyglass, a spectrum sensor designed to address the challenges of effective spectrum usage in dense wireless environments. Spyglass is capable of observing a frequency band and accurately estimating the Angle of Arrival (AoA) of any signal during a single transmission. This includes additional signal context such as center frequency, bandwidth, and I/Q samples. We overcome challenges such as the clutter of fleeting transmissions in common bands, the high cost of array processing for AoA estimation, and the difficulty of detecting and estimating channels for unknown signals. Our first contribution is the development of Searchlite, a protocol-agnostic signal detection and separation algorithm. We use a switched array to reduce cost and processing complexity, and we develop SSFP, a signal processing technique using Fourier transforms that is synchronized to switching boundaries. Spyglass performs multi-channel blind AoA estimation synchronized with the array. Implemented using commercially available hardware, Spyglass demonstrates a median AoA accuracy of 1.4$^\circ$ and the ability to separate simultaneous signals from multiple devices in an unconstrained RF environment, providing valuable tools for large-scale RF data collection and analysis.