Cross-Technology Communication via PHY-Layer Emulation

Abstract

Cross-Technology Communication is an emerging research direction providing a promising solution to the wireless coexistence problem in the ISM bands. However, the state-of-the-art CTC designs have intrinsic limitations in the throughput due to their use of coarse-grained packet-level information. In contrast, we propose to exploit the fine-grained signal modulation information via a technique called PHY-layer emulation to boost CTC throughput. We can embed a legitimate packet of a target technology, e.g., ZigBee, within the payload of a source technology, e.g., WiFi or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). At the mean time, we require no modification at the hardware or firmware at either sender or receiver. We can achieve 8,000x throughput from WiFi to ZigBee and 10,000x throughput from BLE to ZigBee compared to the state of the art. We also have a demo showcasing how our designs can be implemented on off-the-shelf smartphones for smart light bulbs control.