PrivyWave: Privacy-Aware Wireless Sensing of Heartbeat

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Gao, Yixuan, Ahmed, Tanvir, Chang, Zekun, Roumen, Thijs, Nandakumar, Rajalakshmi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866917064065679360
author Gao, Yixuan
Ahmed, Tanvir
Chang, Zekun
Roumen, Thijs
Nandakumar, Rajalakshmi
author_facet Gao, Yixuan
Ahmed, Tanvir
Chang, Zekun
Roumen, Thijs
Nandakumar, Rajalakshmi
contents Wireless sensing technologies can now detect heartbeats using radio frequency and acoustic signals, raising significant privacy concerns. Existing privacy solutions either protect from all sensing systems indiscriminately preventing any utility or operate post-data collection, failing to enable selective access where authorized devices can monitor while unauthorized ones cannot. We present a key-based physical obfuscation system, PrivyWave, that addresses this challenge by generating controlled decoy heartbeat signals at cryptographically-determined frequencies. Unauthorized sensors receive a mixture of real and decoy signals that are indistinguishable without the secret key, while authorized sensors use the key to filter out decoys and recover accurate measurements. Our evaluation with 13 participants demonstrates effective protection across both sensing modalities: for mmWave radar, unauthorized sensors show 21.3 BPM mean absolute error while authorized sensors maintain a much smaller 5.8 BPM; for acoustic sensing, unauthorized error increases to 42.0 BPM while authorized sensors achieve 9.7 BPM. The system operates across multiple sensing modalities without per-modality customization and provides cryptographic obfuscation guarantees. Performance benchmarks show robust protection across different distances (30-150 cm), orientations (120° field of view), and diverse indoor environments, establishing physical-layer obfuscation as a viable approach for selective privacy in pervasive health monitoring.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_02993
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PrivyWave: Privacy-Aware Wireless Sensing of Heartbeat
Gao, Yixuan
Ahmed, Tanvir
Chang, Zekun
Roumen, Thijs
Nandakumar, Rajalakshmi
Cryptography and Security
Human-Computer Interaction
Signal Processing
Wireless sensing technologies can now detect heartbeats using radio frequency and acoustic signals, raising significant privacy concerns. Existing privacy solutions either protect from all sensing systems indiscriminately preventing any utility or operate post-data collection, failing to enable selective access where authorized devices can monitor while unauthorized ones cannot. We present a key-based physical obfuscation system, PrivyWave, that addresses this challenge by generating controlled decoy heartbeat signals at cryptographically-determined frequencies. Unauthorized sensors receive a mixture of real and decoy signals that are indistinguishable without the secret key, while authorized sensors use the key to filter out decoys and recover accurate measurements. Our evaluation with 13 participants demonstrates effective protection across both sensing modalities: for mmWave radar, unauthorized sensors show 21.3 BPM mean absolute error while authorized sensors maintain a much smaller 5.8 BPM; for acoustic sensing, unauthorized error increases to 42.0 BPM while authorized sensors achieve 9.7 BPM. The system operates across multiple sensing modalities without per-modality customization and provides cryptographic obfuscation guarantees. Performance benchmarks show robust protection across different distances (30-150 cm), orientations (120° field of view), and diverse indoor environments, establishing physical-layer obfuscation as a viable approach for selective privacy in pervasive health monitoring.
title PrivyWave: Privacy-Aware Wireless Sensing of Heartbeat
topic Cryptography and Security
Human-Computer Interaction
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02993