skip to main content
research-article

COVID-Safe Spatial Occupancy Monitoring Using OFDM-Based Features and Passive WiFi Samples

Published: 08 September 2021 Publication History

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities have been asking for social distancing to prevent transmission of the virus. However, enforcing such distancing has been challenging in tight spaces such as elevators and unmonitored commercial settings such as offices. This article addresses this gap by proposing a low-cost and non-intrusive method for monitoring social distancing within a given space, using Channel State Information (CSI) from passive WiFi sensing. By exploiting the frequency selective behavior of CSI with a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier, we achieve an improvement in accuracy over existing crowd counting works. Our system counts the number of occupants with a 93% accuracy rate in an elevator setting and predicts whether the COVID-Safe limit is breached with a 97% accuracy rate. We also demonstrate the occupant counting capability of the system in a commercial office setting, achieving 97% accuracy. Our proposed occupancy monitoring outperforms existing methods by at least 7%. Overall, the proposed framework is inexpensive, requiring only one device that passively collects data and a lightweight supervised learning algorithm for prediction. Our lightweight model and accuracy improvements are necessary contributions for WiFi-based counting to be suitable for COVID-specific applications.

References

[1]
Airista. 2020. Social Distancing and Contact Tracing - RTLS Solutions. https://www.airistaflow.com/industries/government/social-distancing-and-contact-tracing/.
[2]
Ramon F. Brena, Edgar Escudero, Cesar Vargas-Rosales, Carlos E. Galvan-Tejada, and David Munoz. 2021. Device-free crowd counting using multi-link Wi-Fi CSI descriptors in doppler spectrum. Electronics 10, 3 (2021), 315.
[3]
Y. Cheng and R. Y. Chang. 2017. Device-free indoor people counting using Wi-Fi channel state information for Internet of Things. In 2017 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM’17). 1–6.
[4]
Francesco Gringoli, Matthias Schulz, Jakob Link, and Matthias Hollick. 2019. Free Your CSI: A channel state information extraction platform for modern Wi-Fi chipsets. In Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation and Characterization (WiNTECH’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 21–28.
[5]
Mohamed Habaebi and Rafhanah Rosli. 2017. RSSI-based human presence detection system for energy saving automation. Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Informatics 5 (2017), 339–350.
[6]
Daniel Halperin, Wenjun Hu, Anmol Sheth, and David Wetherall. 2011. Tool release: Gathering 802.11n traces with channel state information. Computer Communication Review 41 (2011), 53.
[7]
O. T. Ibrahim, W. Gomaa, and M. Youssef. 2019. CrossCount: A deep learning system for device-free human counting using wifi. IEEE Sensors Journal 19, 21 (2019), 9921–9928.
[8]
Jaehoon (Paul) Jeong, Yiwen Shen, Seokhwa Kim, Daegeun Choe, Keuntae Lee, and Yongserk Kim. 2021. DFC: Device-free human counting through WiFi fine-grained subcarrier information. IET Communications 15, 3 (2021), 337–350. 2043.
[9]
Fangmin Li, Mohammed A. A. Al-qaness, Yong Zhang, Bihai Zhao, and Xidao Luan. 2016. A robust and device-free system for the recognition and classification of elderly activities. Sensors 16 (2016), 2043.
[10]
Junye Li, Deepak Mishra, and Aruna Seneviratne. 2020. CSI-Based NTC using ambient WiFi: Opportunities and challenges. In Proceedings of IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps’20). 1–6.
[11]
Junye Li, Deepak Mishra, and Aruna Seneviratne. 2021. Network traffic classification using WiFi sensing. In Modelling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, Maria Carla Calzarossa, Erol Gelenbe, Krysztof Grochla, Ricardo Lent, and Tadeusz Czachórski (Eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 48–61.
[12]
Junhuai Li, Pengjia Tu, Huaijun Wang, Kan Wang, and Lei Yu. 2018. A novel device-free counting method based on channel status information. In Sensors 2018, Vol. 18. 3981.
[13]
Y. Zhao, S. Liu, F. Xue, B. Chen, and X. Chen. 2019. DeepCount: Crowd counting with Wi-Fi using deep learning. Journal of Communications and Information Networks 4, 3 (2019), 38–52.
[14]
Jiguang Lv, Dapeng Man, Wu Yang, Liangyi Gong, Xiaojiang Du, and Miao Yu. 2019. Robust device-free intrusion detection using physical layer information of WiFi signals. Applied Sciences 9 (2019), 175.
[15]
Yongsen Ma, Gang Zhou, and Shuangquan Wang. 2019. WiFi sensing with channel state information: A survey. Computing Surveys 52 (2019), 1–36.
[16]
National University of Singapore. 2020. Singapore Spacer. https://sleepcoglab.wixsite.com/singaporespacer. (2020).
[17]
Northeastern-University. [n.d.]. ECOC. http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/vip/teach/MLcourse/4_boosting/lecture_notes/ecoc/ecoc.pdf.
[18]
Australian Government Department of Health. 2020. Physical distancing for coronavirus (COVID-19). (May 2020). https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/how-to-protect-yourself-and-others-from-coronavirus-covid-19/phys ical-distancing-for-coronavirus-covid-19.
[19]
Ronald K. Pearson, Yrjö Neuvo, Jaakko Astola, and Moncef Gabbouj. 2016. Generalized Hampel filters. EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing 2016, 1 (Aug. 2016), 87.
[20]
Aryan Sharma, Junye Li, Deepak Mishra, and Aruna Seneviratne. 2021. Robust ML model for human counting using ambient WiFi traffic from multiple sources. In Proceedings of the IEEE ICC Workshop on Applications of Affective Sensing in Communication Networks.
[21]
Aryan Sharma, Junye Li, Deepak Mishra, Aruna Seneviratne, and Gustavo Batista. 2021. Passive WiFi CSI sensing based machine learning framework for COVID-Safe occupancy monitoring. In Proceedings of the IEEE ICC Workshop on COVI-COM: Communication, IoT, and AI Technologies to Counter COVID-19.
[22]
Skyfii. 2020. OccupancyNow: Automated Occupancy and Social Distancing Management Toolkit. https://skyfii.io/occupancynow.
[23]
Sonarax. 2020. Social Distancing Keeper. https://www.sonarax.com/social-distancing-keeper.
[24]
A. Tahat, G. Kaddoum, S. Yousefi, S. Valaee, and F. Gagnon. 2016. A Look at the recent wireless positioning techniques with a focus on algorithms for moving receivers. IEEE Access 4 (2016), 6652–6680.
[25]
C. Wang, J. Liu, Y. Chen, H. Liu, and Y. Wang. 2018. Towards in-baggage suspicious object detection using commodity WiFi. In 2018 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS’18). 1–9.
[26]
Fei Wang, Jinsong Han, Feng Lin, and Kui Ren. 2019. WiPIN. https://github.com/geekfeiw/WiPIN.
[27]
Fei Wang, Jinsong Han, Feng Lin, and Kui Ren. 2019. WiPIN: Operation-free passive person identification using Wi-Fi signals. 1–6.
[28]
Wei Wang, Alex X. Liu, Muhammad Shahzad, Kang Ling, and Sanglu Lu. 2015. Understanding and modeling of WiFi signal based human activity recognition. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, 65–76.
[29]
Z. Wang, K. Jiang, Y. Hou, W. Dou, C. Zhang, Z. Huang, and Y. Guo. 2019. A survey on human behavior recognition using channel state information. IEEE Access 7 (2019), 155986–156024.
[30]
Zhengjie Wang, Kangkang Jiang, Yushan Hou, Wenwen Dou, Chengming Zhang, Zehua Huang, and Yinjing Guo. 2019. A survey on human behavior recognition using channel state information. IEEE Access 7 (10 2019), 1–1.
[31]
W. Xi, J. Zhao, X. Li, K. Zhao, S. Tang, X. Liu, and Z. Jiang. 2014. Electronic frog eye: Counting crowd using WiFi. In IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM’14). 361–369.
[32]
Y. Yang, J. Cao, X. Liu, and X. Liu. 2018. Wi-Count: Passing People Counting with COTS WiFi Devices. In 2018 27th International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN’18). 1–9.
[33]
S. Yousefi, H. Narui, S. Dayal, S. Ermon, and S. Valaee. 2017. A survey on behavior recognition using WiFi channel state information. IEEE Communications Magazine 55, 10 (2017), 98–104.
[34]
Y. Zeng, P. H. Pathak, and P. Mohapatra. 2016. WiWho: WiFi-based person identification in smart spaces. In 2016 15th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN’16). 1–12.
[35]
Han Zou, Yuxun Zhou, Jianfei Yang, and Costas J. Spanos. 2018. Device-free occupancy detection and crowd counting in smart buildings with WiFi-enabled IoT. Energy and Buildings 174 (2018), 309–322.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Towards Energy Efficient Wireless Sensing by Leveraging Ambient Wi-Fi TrafficEnergies10.3390/en1702048517:2(485)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2024
  • (2024)An Investigation into the Non-Uniformity of Channel State Information in WiFi Sensing SystemsIEEE INFOCOM 2024 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS)10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS61880.2024.10620749(1-6)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
  • (2024)WiFi Sensing Based Textile Wetness MonitoringICC 2024 - IEEE International Conference on Communications10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10622873(4185-4190)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems
ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems  Volume 12, Issue 4
December 2021
225 pages
ISSN:2158-656X
EISSN:2158-6578
DOI:10.1145/3483349
Issue’s Table of Contents
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 ACM 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: 08 September 2021
Accepted: 01 June 2021
Revised: 01 June 2021
Received: 01 September 2020
Published in TMIS Volume 12, Issue 4

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. COVID-19
  2. social distancing
  3. WiFi
  4. channel state information
  5. machine learning
  6. support vector machine

Qualifiers

  • Research-article
  • Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)85
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)6
Reflects downloads up to 20 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Towards Energy Efficient Wireless Sensing by Leveraging Ambient Wi-Fi TrafficEnergies10.3390/en1702048517:2(485)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2024
  • (2024)An Investigation into the Non-Uniformity of Channel State Information in WiFi Sensing SystemsIEEE INFOCOM 2024 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS)10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS61880.2024.10620749(1-6)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
  • (2024)WiFi Sensing Based Textile Wetness MonitoringICC 2024 - IEEE International Conference on Communications10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10622873(4185-4190)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Smart CSI Processing for Accurate Commodity WiFi-Based Humidity Sensing2024 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing Workshops (ICASSPW)10.1109/ICASSPW62465.2024.10626905(279-283)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
  • (2024)WiSOM: WiFi-enabled self-adaptive system for monitoring the occupancy in smart buildingsEnergy10.1016/j.energy.2024.130420294(130420)Online publication date: May-2024
  • (2023)Geo-Visualization of Spatial Occupancy on Smart Campus Using Wi-Fi Connection Log DataISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information10.3390/ijgi1211045512:11(455)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Human behavior in the time of COVID-19: Learning from big dataFrontiers in Big Data10.3389/fdata.2023.10991826Online publication date: 6-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Graph Domain Adaptation: A Generative ViewACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data10.1145/363171218:3(1-24)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2023
  • (2023)WiFi Sensing with Single-Antenna Devices for Ambient Assisted LivingProceedings of the 8th international Workshop on Sensor-Based Activity Recognition and Artificial Intelligence10.1145/3615834.3615841(1-8)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2023
  • (2023)Transferable Time-Series Forecasting Under Causal Conditional ShiftIEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence10.1109/TPAMI.2023.330435446:4(1932-1949)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2023
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

HTML Format

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media