Joint Design of Sensing and Communication Systems for Smart Homes

With the recent advance of technologies, smart homes are no longer just the subjects of science fiction and are now becoming a reality. it is essential for a smart home to understand its residents and provide entertainment and healthcare services. Researchers have demonstrated the great potential of RF sensing in smart homes, including understanding the residents' gesture commands and monitoring the residents' health status unobtrusively. Although RF sensing has appealing properties, it brings congestion to wireless networks. To make the situation worse, there is an unprecedented amount of wireless traffic in smart homes. in this article, we investigate the joint design of sensing and communication systems to alleviate the strain on wireless resources. instead of designing sensing and communication systems as separate objectives, we tend to address them jointly. We discuss this issue from two directions. The first is to empower the traditional sensing device with communication capability, so that the sensing device will become a dual-function apparatus; the second is to enhance the sensing capability of WiFi signals by redesigning the packet format so that the current communication infrastructure can also act as a sensing device. We believe that only with joint design can the sensing and communication system work harmoniously in smart homes, providing both unobtrusive sensing and ubiquitous connectivity.