Poster: Occupancy state detection using WiFi signals

A large amount of energy could be saved by detecting home occupancy and automatically controlling the lights, HVAC, water heating, and other mechanical systems. Existing systems rely on motion information, which usually fail to detect occupied rooms with stationary people. In this project, we study the possibility of converting commodity WiFi access points to occupancy sensors by exploiting multipath reections as individual spatial sensors. The proposed method measures fine-grained distortions caused by human body on phase and amplitude of WiFi signals. Our initial results suggest that formulating WiFi parameters into angle of arrival provides a more sensitive metric to measure occupancy.