IoT Thrust Seminar | Exploiting Pervasive Leakage EM Signals for Communication, Charging and Sensing

Wireless technologies play critical roles in our daily lives. In recent years, beyond communication, wireless signals have been further utilized for charging and sensing purposes, enabling a wide range of applications. Although exciting, these applications typically require dedicated signals to be transmitted. In this talk, I will discuss how to utilize pervasive electromagnetic (EM) signal leakages in our surrounding environment to achieve the same functions as those with dedicated wireless signals. I will start by introducing the EM signals leaked from Visible Light Communication (VLC) and explain how this "bad" leakage can be leveraged to double communication throughput. Next, I will introduce how these wasted leakage signals can be utilized for wireless charging with a smartly designed bracelet antenna. In addition to communication and charging, I will show how these leakage signals can be utilized for sensing purposes. A new sensing modality based on the EM leakages from power lines and electric vehicles is proposed for fine-grained human sensing. The proposed systems are prototyped with cheap commodity hardware, and comprehensive experiments demonstrate that these leakage signals can be effectively utilized for communication, charging, and sensing.