Waveform-Defined Privacy: A Signal Solution to Protect Wireless Sensing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a waveform-defined privacy (WDP) method that conceals CSI phase information in wireless signals, enhancing user privacy and communication security by leveraging a novel modulation mechanism and tunable waveform parameters.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new waveform-based privacy solution that hides CSI phase info and improves security, with a unique modulation mechanism and adjustable parameters.

Findings

WDP effectively conceals CSI phase information to protect privacy.

The waveform solution enhances communication security through parameter tuning.

The proposed method achieves better performance compared to existing approaches.

Abstract

Wireless signals are commonly used for communications. Emerging applications are giving new functions to wireless signals, in which wireless sensing is the most attractive one. Channel state information (CSI) is not only the parameter for channel equalization in communications but also the indicator for wireless sensing. However, due to the broadcast nature of wireless signals, eavesdroppers can easily capture legitimate user signals and violate user privacy by measuring CSI. Moreover, the advancement of hardware simplifies illegal eavesdropping since smart devices can track over-the-air signals through walls. Therefore, this work considers a waveform-defined privacy (WDP) solution that can hide CSI phase information and therefore protect user privacy. Besides, the proposed waveform solution achieves better performance due to the use of a unique modulation mechanism. Additionally, by tuning a waveform parameter, the waveform can also enhance communication security.