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Engineering and technology
- Wireless communication and positioning systems
- Telecommunication and remote sensing
- Wireless communications
The radio frequency part of the spectrum is filled with various energy sources that are transmitted, reflected, refracted, diffracted, absorbed and scattered by objects and persons in the real world. The energy is transmitted for other reasons than interpreting the environment: it is transmitting information, data that people or machines are sharing. However, like a lighthouse that signals the location of the shore and simultaneously intermittently lights up that shore, radio frequency transmissions carry both data and information about the environment. In the most generic sense, our objective is to be able to look at the radio frequency spectrum like our eyes look at the visual light spectrum and ‘see’ what is happening. The major research hypothesis of this proposal is that devices and persons can be counted, identified and tracked between rooms by studying changes in received yet unknown radio signals. If we can prove this hypothesis, the academic breakthrough will lead to a novel class of research focusing on interpreting the real world using the below visual light ambient electromagnetic spectrum.