Evaluating Acoustic Data Transmission Schemes for Ad-Hoc Communication Between Nearby Smart Devices
Florentin Putz, Philipp Fortmann, Jan Frank, Christoph Haugwitz, Mario Kupnik, Matthias Hollick

TL;DR
This paper systematically evaluates acoustic data transmission schemes for nearby smart devices, revealing real-world challenges and providing a reproducible testing methodology, re-implementations, and a dataset to improve future research and deployment reliability.
Contribution
It offers the first comprehensive real-world evaluation of acoustic communication schemes, including re-implementations, a testbed, and a dataset to enhance robustness and reproducibility.
Findings
Many schemes struggle with indoor multipath effects
Device audio characteristics significantly impact reliability
Re-implementations and dataset facilitate future research
Abstract
Acoustic data transmission offers a compelling alternative to Bluetooth and NFC by leveraging the ubiquitous speakers and microphones in smartphones and IoT devices. However, most research in this field relies on simulations or limited on-device testing, which makes the real-world reliability of proposed schemes difficult to assess. We systematically reviewed 31 acoustic communication studies for commodity devices and found that none provided accessible source code. After contacting authors and re-implementing three promising schemes, we assembled a testbed of eight representative acoustic communication systems. Using over 11000 smartphone transmissions in both realistic indoor environments and an anechoic chamber, we provide a systematic and repeatable methodology for evaluating the reliability and generalizability of these schemes under real-world conditions. Our results show that…
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Taxonomy
TopicsBluetooth and Wireless Communication Technologies · Indoor and Outdoor Localization Technologies · Speech and Audio Processing
