research-article

EM-Comm: Touch-based Communication via Modulated Electromagnetic Emissions

Authors:

Chouchang Jack Yang,

Alanson P. SampleAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Volume 1, Issue 3

Article No.: 118, Pages 1 - 24

https://doi.org/10.1145/3130984

Published: 11 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Touch-based communication offers a direct and intuitive way for users to initiate and control data transfer when using tangible and ubiquitous interfaces. However, this requires that each interactive device be instrumented with a dedicated radio transmitter, which limits many applications. While not all devices have radio hardware, all devices do emit small amounts of electromagnetic noise in the form of EMI. We argue that if properly modulated these electromagnetic emissions can be used as an untapped communication channel capable of transmitting arbitrary data.

To enable this, a spread spectrum frequency shift keying modulation scheme has been developed to encode data onto the device’s EMI. When the device is touched by a user, the data encoded EMI signal travels through their body and into our custom wrist band, consisting of a single op-amp and MCU. Our results show that we are able to turn electronic primitives such as LEDs, buttons, I/O lines, LCD screens, motors and power supplies into radio transmitters capable of touch communication. Effective data rates range from 5.8Kbps to 22 bit per image depending on the primitive used. To demonstrate this new communication technique, we develop several interactive experiences where users can retrieve complex information such as the function of buttons on a device, directions embedded into a LCD screen, and simplified device pairing. Ultimately, EM-Comm enables nearly any electronic device to be turned into a touch-based radio transmitter with only a software upgrade.

Supplementary Material

yang (yang.zip)

Supplemental movie, appendix, image and software files for, EM-Comm: Touch-based Communication via Modulated Electromagnetic Emissions

Download
67.67 MB

References

[1]

2017. FCC’s Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 15. Technical Report. Federal Communications Commission.

[2]

Michael Buettner, Richa Prasad, Matthai Philipose, and David Wetherall. 2009. Recognizing Daily Activities with RFID-based Sensors. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 51--60.

Digital Library

[3]

Ke-Yu Chen, Gabe A. Cohn, Sidhant Gupta, and Shwetak N. Patel. 2013. uTouch: Sensing Touch Gestures on Unmodified LCDs. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2581--2584.

Digital Library

[4]

Gabe Cohn, Daniel Morris, Shwetak Patel, and Desney Tan. 2012. Humantenna: Using the Body As an Antenna for Real-time Whole-body Interaction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1901--1910.

Digital Library

[5]

Gabe Cohn, Daniel Morris, Shwetak N. Patel, and Desney S. Tan. 2011. Your Noise is My Command: Sensing Gestures Using the Body As an Antenna. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 791--800.

Digital Library

[6]

David J. R. Cristaldi, Salvatore Pennisi, and Francesco Pulvirenti. 2009. Liquid Crystal Display Drivers: Techniques and Circuits (1st ed.). Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated.

Digital Library

[7]

Paul Dietz and Darren Leigh. 2001. DiamondTouch: A Multi-user Touch Technology. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’01). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 219--226.

Digital Library

[8]

Equipment Authorization Division. 1996. Understanding the FCC Regulations for Low-Power Non-Licensed Transmitters. OET Bulletin NO. 63. Federal Communications Commission, Office of Engineering and Technology; Customer Service Branch, MS 1300F2; 7435 Oakland Mills Road; Columbia, MD 21046.

[9]

Kenneth P. Fishkin, Matthai Philipose, and Adam Rea. 2005. Hands-On RFID: Wireless Wearables for Detecting Use of Objects. In Proceedings of the Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC ’05). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 38--43.

Digital Library

[10]

James Fogarty, Carolyn Au, and Scott E. Hudson. 2006. Sensing from the Basement: A Feasibility Study of Unobtrusive and Low-cost Home Activity Recognition. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 91--100.

Digital Library

[11]

Tobias Grosse-Puppendahl, Sebastian Herber, Raphael Wimmer, Frank Englert, Sebastian Beck, Julian von Wilmsdorff, Reiner Wichert, and Arjan Kuijper. 2014. Capacitive Near-field Communication for Ubiquitous Interaction and Perception. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 231--242.

Digital Library

[12]

Tobias Grosse-Puppendahl, Christian Holz, Gabe Cohn, Raphael Wimmer, Oskar Bechtold, Steve Hodges, Matthew S. Reynolds, and Joshua R. Smith. 2017. Finding Common Ground: A Survey of Capacitive Sensing in Human-Computer Interaction. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3293--3315.

Digital Library

[13]

Sidhant Gupta, Ke-Yu Chen, Matthew S. Reynolds, and Shwetak N. Patel. 2011. LightWave: Using Compact Fluorescent Lights As Sensors. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 65--74.

Digital Library

[14]

Sidhant Gupta, Matthew S. Reynolds, and Shwetak N. Patel. 2010. ElectriSense: Single-point Sensing Using EMI for Electrical Event Detection and Classification in the Home. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 139--148.

Digital Library

[15]

Simon Haykin. 2009. Communication Systems (5th ed.). Wiley Publishing.

Digital Library

[16]

Mehrdad Hessar, Vikram Iyer, and Shyamnath Gollakota. 2016. Enabling On-body Transmissions with Commodity Devices. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1100--1111.

Digital Library

[17]

Christian Holz and Marius Knaust. 2015. Biometric Touch Sensing: Seamlessly Augmenting Each Touch with Continuous Authentication. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST 15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 303--312.

Digital Library

[18]

Gierad Laput, Chouchang Yang, Robert Xiao, Alanson Sample, and Chris Harrison. 2015. EM-Sense: Touch Recognition of Uninstrumented, Electrical and Electromechanical Objects. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 157--166.

Digital Library

[19]

Hanchuan Li, Eric Brockmeyer, Elizabeth J. Carter, Josh Fromm, Scott E. Hudson, Shwetak N. Patel, and Alanson Sample. 2016. PaperID: A Technique for Drawing Functional Battery-Free Wireless Interfaces on Paper. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5885--5896.

Digital Library

[20]

Tianxing Li, Chuankai An, Xinran Xiao, Andrew T. Campbell, and Xia Zhou. 2015. Real-Time Screen-Camera Communication Behind Any Scene. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 197--211.

Digital Library

[21]

Nicolai Marquardt, Alex S. Taylor, Nicolas Villar, and Saul Greenberg. 2010. Rethinking RFID: Awareness and Control for Interaction with RFID Systems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2307--2316.

Digital Library

[22]

N. Matsushita, S. Tajima, Y. Ayatsuka, and J. Rekimoto. 2000. Wearable key: device for personalizing nearby environment. In Digest of Papers. Fourth International Symposium on Wearable Computers. 119--126.

Digital Library

[23]

Duck Gun Park, Jin Kyung Kim, Jin Bong Sung, Jung Hwan Hwang, Chang Hee Hyung, and Sung Weon Kang. 2006. TAP: Touch-and-play. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 677--680.

Digital Library

[24]

S. Parlak and I. Marsic. 2013. Detecting Object Motion Using Passive RFID: A Trauma Resuscitation Case Study. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement 62, 9 (Sept 2013), 2430--2437.

[25]

Kurt Partridge, Bradley Dahlquist, Alireza Veiseh, Annie Cain, Ann Foreman, Joseph Goldberg, and Gaetano Borriello. 2001. Empirical Measurements of Intrabody Communication Performance Under Varied Physical Configurations. In Proc. of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’01). 183--190.

Digital Library

[26]

Shwetak N. Patel, Thomas Robertson, Julie A. Kientz, Matthew S. Reynolds, and Gregory D. Abowd. 2007. At the Flick of a Switch: Detecting and Classifying Unique Electrical Events on the Residential Power Line. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’07). Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 271--288. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1771592.1771608

Digital Library

[27]

D. J. Patterson, D. Fox, H. Kautz, and M. Philipose. 2005. Fine-grained activity recognition by aggregating abstract object usage. In Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’05). 44--51.

Digital Library

[28]

Jun Rekimoto. 1997. Pick-and-drop: A Direct Manipulation Technique for Multiple Computer Environments. In Proc. of the 10th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’97). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 31--39.

Digital Library

[29]

David Schwarz, Max Schwarz, Jörg Stückler, and Sven Behnke. 2015. Cosero, Find My Keys! Object Localization and Retrieval Using Bluetooth Low Energy Tags. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 195--206.

[30]

Andrew Spielberg, Alanson Sample, Scott E. Hudson, Jennifer Mankoff, and James McCann. 2016. RapID: A Framework for Fabricating Low-Latency Interactive Objects with RFID Tags. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5897--5908.

Digital Library

[31]

Emmanuel Munguia Tapia, Stephen S. Intille, and Kent Larson. 2004. Activity Recognition in the Home Using Simple and Ubiquitous Sensors. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 158--175.

[32]

Edward J. Wang, Tien-Jui Lee, Alex Mariakakis, Mayank Goel, Sidhant Gupta, and Shwetak N. Patel. 2015. MagnifiSense: Inferring Device Interaction Using Wrist-worn Passive Magneto-inductive Sensors. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15--26.

Digital Library

[33]

C. Yang and A. P. Sample. 2016. EM-ID: Tag-less identification of electrical devices via electromagnetic emissions. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID). 1--8.

[34]

T. G. Zimmerman. 1996. Personal Area Networks: Near-field intrabody communication. IBM Systems Journal 35, 3.4 (1996), 609--617.

Digital Library

[35]

Thomas G. Zimmerman, Joshua R. Smith, Joseph A. Paradiso, David Allport, and Neil Gershenfeld. 1995. Applying Electric Field Sensing to Human-computer Interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’95). ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, USA, 280--287.

Digital Library

Cited By

Li KIravantchi YZhu YPark HSample A(2025)HandSAW: Wearable Hand-based Event Recognition via On-Body Surface Acoustic WavesProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/37122769:1(1-29)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3712276
To SKadomoto JIrie HSakai S(2024)DataPipettor: Touch-Based Information Transfer Interface Using Proximity Wireless CommunicationAdjunct Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3672539.3686333(1-3)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672539.3686333
Yan ZSong QTan R(2023)Touch-to-Access Device Authentication For Indoor Smart ObjectsIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2021.308949722:2(1185-1197)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2021.3089497
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

EM-Comm: Touch-based Communication via Modulated Electromagnetic Emissions
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interactive systems and tools
      1. User interface management systems

Recommendations

PressTact: Side Pressure-Based Input for Smartwatch Interaction
CHI EA '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Smartwatches have gained a lot of public interest as one of the most popular wearable devices in recent times, but their diminutive touch screens mar the user experiences. The small screen of watch suffers from visual occlusion and the fat finger ...
SenseBelt: A Belt-Worn Sensor to Support Cross-Device Interaction
CHI EA '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Mobile interaction is shifting from a single device to simultaneous interaction with ensembles of devices such as phones, tablets, or watches. Spatially-aware cross-device interaction between mobile devices typically requires a fixed tracking ...
PocketTouch: through-fabric capacitive touch input
UIST '11: Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

PocketTouch is a capacitive sensing prototype that enables eyes-free multitouch input on a handheld device without having to remove the device from the pocket of one's pants, shirt, bag, or purse. PocketTouch enables a rich set of gesture interactions, ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies Volume 1, Issue 3

September 2017

2023 pages

EISSN:2474-9567

DOI:10.1145/3139486

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 11 September 2017

Accepted: 01 August 2017

Revised: 01 July 2017

Received: 01 May 2017

Published in IMWUT Volume 1, Issue 3

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

17
Total Citations
View Citations
535
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)21
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 03 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Li KIravantchi YZhu YPark HSample A(2025)HandSAW: Wearable Hand-based Event Recognition via On-Body Surface Acoustic WavesProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/37122769:1(1-29)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3712276
To SKadomoto JIrie HSakai S(2024)DataPipettor: Touch-Based Information Transfer Interface Using Proximity Wireless CommunicationAdjunct Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3672539.3686333(1-3)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672539.3686333
Yan ZSong QTan R(2023)Touch-to-Access Device Authentication For Indoor Smart ObjectsIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2021.308949722:2(1185-1197)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2021.3089497
Ding DChen YJi XXue G(2023)LeakThief: Stealing the Behavior Information of Laptop via Leakage Current2023 20th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON)10.1109/SECON58729.2023.10287495(186-194)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SECON58729.2023.10287495
Yu DWang XLiang PSun X(2022)Spatio-temporal convolutional residual network for regional commercial vitality predictionMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-022-12845-981:19(27923-27948)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11042-022-12845-9
Ding DYang LChen YXue G(2021)Leakage or IdentificationProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/34949845:4(1-23)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3494984
Wolling FHuynh CVan Laerhoven K(2021)IBSync: Intra-body Synchronization of Wearable Devices Using Artificial ECG LandmarksProceedings of the 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers10.1145/3460421.3478815(102-107)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3460421.3478815
Abe SHiraki TFukushima SNaemura T(2020)[Paper] Imperceptible Color Vibration for Screen-Camera Communication via 2D Binary PatternITE Transactions on Media Technology and Applications10.3169/mta.8.1708:3(170-185)Online publication date: 2020
https://doi.org/10.3169/mta.8.170
Jin WLi MMurali SGuo LLigatti JOu XKatz JVigna G(2020)Harnessing the Ambient Radio Frequency Noise for Wearable Device PairingProceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3372297.3417288(1135-1148)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3372297.3417288
Yan ZSong QTan RLi YKong AAgarwal SGreenstein BBalasubramanian AGollakota SZhang X(2019)Towards Touch-to-Access Device Authentication Using Induced Body Electric PotentialsThe 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3300061.3300118(1-16)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3300061.3300118
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents