RSS step size: 1 dB is not enough!

Abstract

A radio transceiver normally provides received signal strength (RSS) quantized with 1 dB or higher step size. Currently, we know of no application which has demonstrated a need for sub-dB RSS estimates. In this paper, we demonstrate the need for, and benefits of, greater resolution in RSS for breathing rate monitoring and gesture recognition. Measuring RSS requires orders of magnitude less bandwidth than measuring OFDM channel state information (CSI) or frequency modulated carrier wave (FMCW) channel delay. We have designed a prototype with an off-the-shelf low-power transceiver and a processor to achieve an RSS estimate with a median error of 0.013 dB. We experimentally verify its performance in non-contact breathing monitoring and gesture recognition. We demonstrate that simply decreasing the step size of RSS lower than 1 dB can enable significant benefits, enabling extremely low bandwidth RF sensing systems. Results indicate that RFIC designers could enable significant gains for RF sensing applications with four more bits of RSS quantization.