WiFi Screening for Weapons, Chemicals and Bombs

Regular WiFi signals to be used to passively screen bags for weapons, chemicals and bombs.

11:17 27 August 2018

US engineers have developed a system designed to passively screen bags for bombs, chemicals and weapons using regular WiFi signals. The study, which is led by Rutgers University’s Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB), described how channel state information (CSI) from regular WiFi signals can be used to detect what material an object in a bag is made of.

 

Yingying (Jennifer) Chen, study co-author and a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Rutgers-New Brunswick’s School of Engineering, said: “This could have a great impact in protecting the public from dangerous objects. There’s a growing need for that now.”

 

The team carried out experiments using 15 types of objects and six different types of bags. The system was able to detect dangerous objects with accuracy rates of 99per cent.

 

“In large public areas, it’s hard to set up expensive screening infrastructure like what’s in airports,” said Chen. “Manpower is always needed to check bags and we wanted to develop a complementary method to try to reduce manpower.”