Extracting Human Context Through Receiver-End Beamforming

Device-free passive sensing of the human targets using wireless signals have acquired much attention in the recent past because of its importance in many applications including security, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, activity recognition, and elderly care. In this paper, we use receiver-side beamforming to isolate the array response of a human target when the line of sight array response is several magnitudes stronger than the human response. The solution is implemented in a 5G testbed using a software-defined radio (SDR) platform. As beamforming with SDRs faces the challenge to train the beamformer to different azimuth angles, we present an algorithm to generate the steering vectors for all azimuth angles from a few training directions amidst imprecise prior information on the training steering vectors. We extract the direction of arrival (DoA) from the array response of the human target, and conducting experiments in a semi-anechoic chamber, we detect the DoAs of up to four stationary human targets and track the DoA of up to two walking persons simultaneously.