Title: High-Precision Ranging Matters: Uncovering the Potential of Ultra-wideband Radios in Real-World Applications

Date: Monday, March 4, 2024

Time: 14:30 – 16:30 EST

Location: KACB 2126

Zoom link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/8373661042?omn=96013638472

Yifeng Cao

Ph.D. Candidate

School of Computer Science

College of Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee: 

Dr. Ashutosh Dhekne (Advisor) – School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Mostafa Ammar – School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Ellen Zegura – School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Thad Starner – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Vivek Jain –  Bosch Research

Abstract: 

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio is a wireless technology characterized by an extremely large bandwidth (≥ 500MHz). Such a wide band enables UWB to perform ranging in decimeter-level accuracy,  making it an optimal option for accurate localization.  The recent incorporation of UWB in mobile devices like iPhones, Samsung smartphones and AirTags has demonstrated its feasibility in medium-range positioning. However, the potential of UWB is still under-explored even in today’s market for three reasons. First, accurate ranging measurement is an important modality in extensive sensing applications beyond localization, including physical distancing, human action recognition, autonomous parking, etc. Merely using UWB for object positioning ignores the vast possibilities to apply UWB in the general mobile computing field. Second, most current use cases of UWB focus on the baseband. The potential of UWB’s carrier wave, and particularly its phase, has not been exploited. Third, as a radio technology working on an independent band, UWB does not interfere with other widely used wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.

The objective of this dissertation is to explore and extend the possibilities of UWB, enabling various applications. Our exploration demonstrates that introducing UWB can both achieve better performance in solving a problem which is traditionally tackled by other technologies, and open the gates to new applications. I will first introduce how we can leverage UWB’s fundamental ranging ability to perform real-time physical distancing, which is a primary solution to maintaining safe distances in many scenarios like physical distancing in gym, or social distancing during a flu pandemic. Then, I demonstrate the capability of UWB to achieve millimeter-level precision in a handwriting digitization system. Then I move beyond the localization and tracking task for which UWB is typically used. I demonstrate UWB can improve the human action recognition performance by measuring distance between a pair of body joints. Finally, I will present a secure and usable UWB-based two-factor (2FA) authentication platform, demonstrating UWB's feasibility in the security field. This UWB-based 2FA solution eliminates various social engineering attacks including phishing attack, 2FA-fatigue attack, co-located attack, etc., while upholding fast authentication.