RF Sensing and Holography in Dense Wireless Networks: Towards Privacy-Scalable and Ethical Design

Recently, the development of techniques to capture and process wireless stray electromagnetic (EM) radiation from different radio sources is gaining increasing attention. RF sensing is, for example, an emerging paradigm that transforms existing wireless networks by adding sensing modalities to improve the perception of users and the environment. Stray fields of wireless devices in arbitrary frequency bands are recorded in a phase-sensitive manner and visualized in 3D to reconstruct or map the surrounding environment. These techniques can be generally exploited to transform radio networks into virtual radio sensors to allow mapping of objects, human-scale sensing, behavior recognition, and crowd density estimation. Ubiquitous perception through RF signals is a pivotal opportunity for future technology: it enables personalized services such as smart living, automated logistics or interaction through free-space gestures. However, it also challenges ethical and moral boundaries and threatens privacy. The workshop encourages authors from academia and industry to submit manuscripts on innovations on radio sensing, holography, networks, and computing techniques for privacy-selective human scale sensing. Analysis of social implications of the technology are also welcomed.