Wireless Network Modded to See Through Walls

Technology Review
October 2, 2009

[efoods]It’s every schoolboy’s dream: an easy way of looking through walls to spy on neighbors, monitor siblings, and keep tabs on the sweet jar. And now a dream no longer…

Researchers at the University of Utah say that the way radio signals vary in a wireless network can reveal the movement of people behind closed doors. Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari have developed a technique called variance-based radio tomographic imaging that processes the signals to reveal signs of movement. They’ve even tested the idea with a 34-node wireless network using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol, the protocol for personal area networks employed by home automation services such as ZigBee.

The basic idea is straightforward. The signal strength at any point in a network is the sum of all the paths the radio waves can take to get to the receiver. Any change in the volume of space through which the signals pass, for example caused by the movement of a person, makes the signal strength vary. So by “interrogating” this volume of space with many signals, picked up by multiple receivers, it is possible to build up a picture of the movement within it.

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This article was posted: Friday, October 2, 2009 at 3:21 pm

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