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Received signal strength based respiration rate monitoring is emerging as an alternative non-contact technology. These systems make use of the radio measurements of short-range commodity wireless devices, which vary due to the inhalation and exhalation motion of a person. The success of respiration rate estimation using such measurements depends on the signal-to-noise ratio, which alters with properties of the person and with the measurement system. To date, no model has been presented that allows evaluation of different deployments or system configurations for successful breathing rate estimation. In this paper, a received signal strength model for respiration rate monitoring is introduced. It is shown that measurements in linear and logarithmic scale have the same functional form, and the same estimation techniques can be used in both cases. The model is numerically and empirically evaluated, and its properties are discussed in depth. The most important model implications are validated under varying signal-to-noise ratio conditions using the performances of three estimators: batch frequency estimator, recursive Bayesian estimator, and model-based estimator. The results are in coherence with the findings, and they imply that different estimators are advantageous in different signal-to-noise ratio regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread applications of massive MTC are limited by energy availability, spectrum congestion, and device costs. The emerging AmBC not only addresses these bottlenecks but also opens opportunities for new applications. This article aims to explore AmBC-enhanced future ultra-low-power MTC. In this context, we present the development trends in AmBC prototype designs and discuss potential applications, highlight the specific features of the AmBC technology, and review AmBC receiver designs. Finally, we investigate and outline the future research challenges and trends from the practical aspects of AmBC systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Received signal strength based radio tomographic imaging is a popular device-free indoor localization method which reconstructs the spatial loss field of the environment using measurements from a dense wireless network. Existing methods achieve high accuracy localization using a complex system with many sophisticated components. In this work, we propose an alternative and simpler imaging system based on link level occupancy detection. First, we introduce a single-bounce reflection based received signal strength model, which allows relating received signal strength variations to a large region around the link-lines. Then, based on the model, we present methods for all system components including a classifier, a detector, a back-projection based reconstruction algorithm, and a localization method. The introduced system has the following advantages over the other imaging based methods: i) a simple image reconstruction method that is straightforward to implement; ii) significantly lower computational complexity such that no floating point multiplication is required; iii) each link's measured data are compressed to a single bit, providing improved scalability; and iv) physically significant and repeatable parameters. The proposed method is validated using measurement data. Results show that the proposed method achieves the above advantages without loss of accuracy compared to the other available methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The indoor radio propagation channel is typically modeled as a two-state time-variant process, where one of the states represents the channel when the environment is static, whereas the other state characterizes the medium when it is altered by people. In this paper, the aforementioned process is augmented with an additional state. It is shown that the changes in received signal strength are dictated by: 1) electronic noise, when a person is not present in the monitored area; 2) reflection, when a person is moving in the close vicinity of line-of-sight; and 3) shadowing, when a person is obstructing the line-of-sight component of the transmitter–receiver pair. Statistical and spatial models for the three states are derived, and the models are empirically validated. Based on the models, a link line monitoring system is designed, which aims to, first, estimate the temporal state of the channel using a hidden Markov model, and, second, track a person using a particle filter. The results suggest that the presented system outperforms other state-of-the-art systems in terms of localization accuracy while increasing size of the link's sensing region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In ambient rescatter communications, devices convey information by modulating and rescattering the radio frequency signals impinging on their antennas. In this correspondence, we consider a system consisting of a legacy modulated continuous carrier multiple-input-multiple-output link and a multiantenna modulated rescatter (MRS) node, where the MRS node modulates and rescatters the signal generated by the legacy transmitter. The receiver seeks to decode both the original message and the information added by the MRS. We show that the achievable sum rate of this system exceeds that which the legacy system could achieve alone. We further consider the impact of channel estimation errors under the least squares channel estimation and study the achievable rate of the legacy and MRS systems, where a linear minimum mean square error receiver with successive interference cancellation is utilized for joint decoding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A growing set of environmental sensing applications use received signal strength measurements of a static wireless network for unobtrusive monitoring purposes. The success of these systems, which typically process low-amplitude signals, depend strongly on the distribution of the measurements when there are no changes in the channel. In this letter, a statistical model for signal strength measurements acquired when the environment is static is studied. As previously empirically verified, it is shown that the measurements have log-normal distribution even in idealistic environments, which cannot be explained using log-normal shadow fading arguments. Quantization and round-off errors induced by different measurement system components are also considered, and their impact are analyzed. As a result, it is shown that the logarithmic received signal strength measurements under static channel conditions are samples from stationary Gaussian process independent of the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Low-data-rate wireless networks can be deployed for physical intrusion detection and localization purposes. The intrusion of a physical object (or human) will disrupt the radio-frequency magnetic field and can be detected by observing the change in radio attenuation. This gives the basis for the radio tomographic imaging technology, which has recently been developed for passively monitoring and tracking objects. Due to noise and the lack of knowledge about the number and the sizes of intruding objects, multiobject intrusion detection and localization is a challenging issue. This paper proposes an extended variational Bayesian Gaussian mixture model (VB-GMM) algorithm in treating this problem. The extended VB-GMM algorithm applies a Gaussian mixture model to model the changed radio attenuation in a monitored field due to the intrusion of an unknown number of objects and uses a modified version of the variational Bayesian approach for model estimation. Real-world data from both outdoor and indoor experiments (using the radio tomographic imaging technology) have been used to verify the high accuracy and the robustness of the proposed multiobject localization algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]