Eliminating the Barriers: Demystifying Wi-Fi Baseband Design and Introducing the PicoScenes Wi-Fi Sensing Platform

The research on Wi-Fi sensing has been thriving over the past decade but process not smooth. Three barriers always hamper research: 1) unknown baseband design and its influence; 2) inadequate hardware; 3) lack of versatile flexible measurement software. This article tries to eliminate these through following work. First, we present an in-depth study Qualcomm Atheros AR9300 (QCA9300) NIC. We identify a missing item existing channel state information (CSI) model, namely, CSI distortion, filter as origin. also propose distortion removal method. Second, reintroduce both QCA9300 software-defined radio (SDR) powerful hardware for research. For QCA9300, unlock arbitrary tuning carrier frequency bandwidth. SDR, develop high-performance software implementation 802.11a/g/n/ac/ax baseband, allowing users fully control access complete physical-layer information. Third, release PicoScenes software, which supports concurrent from multiple Intel Wireless Link (IWL5300), SDR hardware. features rich low-level controls, packet injection, implementation. It allows their own plugins. Finally, report state-of-the-art results in extensive evaluations system, such >2-GHz available spectrum measurement, up 40 1 kHz rates achieved by SDR. is at https://ps.zpj.io.