RF Cloud for Cyberspace Intelligence

Kaveh Pahlavan,Julang Ying,Erin Solovey,Ziheng Li,Zehua Dong,John Patrick Loftus

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2993548

Kaveh Pahlavan, Julang Ying + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2020.2993548

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Abstract

Wireless information networks have become a necessity of our day-to-day life. Over a billion Wi-Fi access points, hundreds of thousands of cell towers, and billions of IoT devices, using a variety of wireless technologies, create the infrastructure that enables this technology to access everyone, everywhere. The radio signal carrying the wireless information, propagates from antennas through the air and creates a radio frequency (RF) cloud carrying a huge amount of data that is commonly accessible by anyone. The big data of the RF cloud includes information about the transmitter type and addresses, embedded in the information packets; as well as features of the RF signal carrying the message, such as received signal strength (RSS), time of arrival (TOA), direction of arrival (DOA), channel impulse response (CIR), and channel state information (CSI). We can benefit from the big data contents of the messages as well as the temporal and spatial variations of their RF propagation characteristics to engineer intelligent cyberspace applications. This paper provides a holistic vision of emerging cyberspace applications and explains how they benefit from the RF cloud to operate. We begin by introducing the big data contents of the RF cloud. Then, we explain how innovative cyberspace applications are emerging that benefit from this big data. We classify these applications into three categories: wireless positioning systems, gesture and motion detection technologies, and authentication and security techniques. We explain how Wi-Fi, cell-tower, and IoT wireless positioning systems benefit from big data of the RF cloud. We discuss how researchers are studying applications of RF cloud features for motion, activity and gesture detection for human-computer interaction, and we show how authentication and security applications benefit from RF cloud characteristics.

Highlights

The holistic view of wireless data communications for office information networking emerged in the mid-1980’s [1], [2] and the IEEE 802.11 standardization activity for wireless local area networking, commercially known as Wi-Fi, began in late 1980s to address this industry
This paper provides a visionary overview of these emerging cyberspace applications and explains how they benefit from radio frequency (RF) cloud to operate
Different wireless devices measure some of these parameters for enhancing their communication quality and those measurements are available for development of other cyberspace applications, which we present in this paper

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Over a billion Wi-Fi access points deployed worldwide connect our mobile, personal, and fixed devices to the Internet and cyberspace. The RF signal radiating from over a billion Wi-Fi access points, several hundred thousands of cell towers, and trillions of IoT devices using Bluetooth, ZigBee, UWB, mmWave, and RFID technologies invites innovative opportunistic big data application developments for cyberspace [8]. The RF signals radiating from these devices create an RF cloud reachable to any device with an RF front end to sense their signals The features of these RF signals such as received signal strength (RSS), time of arrival (TOA), direction of arrival (DOA), channel impulse response (CIR), and channel state information (CSI), provide a fertile ground for numerous innovative opportunistic cyberspace applications. We explain how researchers are studying applications of these features for motion, activity and gesture detection as well as authentication and security to open a new horizon for human-computer interaction

BIG DATA IN THE RF CLOUD

Findings

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS