POLAR: Passive object localization with IEEE 802.11ad using phased antenna arrays

Millimeter-wave systems not only provide high data rates and low latency, but the very large bandwidth also allows for highly accurate environment sensing. Such properties are extremely useful for smart factory scenarios. At the same time, reusing existing communication links for passive object localization is significantly more challenging than radar-based approaches due to the sparsity of the millimeter-wave multi-path environment and the weakness of the reflected paths compared to the line-of-sight path.

In this paper, we explore the passive object localization accuracy that can be achieved with IEEE 802.11ad devices. We use commercial Access Points (APs) whereas the station design is based on a full-bandwidth 802.11ad compatible FPGA-based platform with a phased antenna array. The stations exploit the preamble of the beam training packets of the APs to obtain Channel Impulse Response (CIR) measurements for all antenna patterns. With this, we determine distance and angle information for the different multi-path components in the environment to passively localize a mobile object. We evaluate our system with multiple APs and a moving robot with a metallic surface. Our system operates in real-time and achieves 6.5cm mean error accuracy and sub-meter accuracy in 100% of the cases.