Smartphone-Based Social Distance Detection Technology with Near-Ultrasonic Signal

Jia, Naizheng, Shu, Haoran, Wang, Xinheng ORCID: 0000-0001-8771-8901, Xu, Bowen, Xi, Yuzhang, Xue, Can, Liu, Youming and Wang, Zhi (2022) Smartphone-Based Social Distance Detection Technology with Near-Ultrasonic Signal. SENSORS, 22 (19). 7345-.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22197345

Abstract

With the emergence of COVID-19, social distancing detection is a crucial technique for epidemic prevention and control. However, the current mainstream detection technology cannot obtain accurate social distance in real-time. To address this problem, this paper presents a first study on smartphone-based social distance detection technology based on near-ultrasonic signals. Firstly, according to auditory characteristics of the human ear and smartphone frequency response characteristics, a group of 18 kHz-23 kHz inaudible Chirp signals accompanied with single frequency signals are designed to complete ranging and ID identification in a short time. Secondly, an improved mutual ranging algorithm is proposed by combining the cubic spline interpolation and a two-stage search to obtain robust mutual ranging performance against multipath and NLoS affect. Thirdly, a hybrid channel access protocol is proposed consisting of Chirp BOK, FDMA, and CSMA/CA to increase the number of concurrencies and reduce the probability of collision. The results show that in our ranging algorithm, 95% of the mutual ranging error within 5 m is less than 10 cm and gets the best performance compared to the other traditional methods in both LoS and NLoS. The protocol can efficiently utilize the limited near-ultrasonic channel resources and achieve a high refresh rate ranging under the premise of reducing the collision probability. Our study can realize high-precision, high-refresh-rate social distance detection on smartphones and has significant application value during an epidemic.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	social distance detection, acoustic signal, mutual ranging, near-ultrasonic signal, multiple access protocol
Divisions:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	24 Apr 2023 14:40
Last Modified:	24 Apr 2023 14:41
DOI:	10.3390/s22197345
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.3390/s22197345
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3169933