Millimeter Wave Sensing: a Review of Application Pipelines and Building Blocks
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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXXX XXXX 1 Millimeter Wave Sensing: A Review of Application Pipelines and Building Blocks Bram van Berlo, Amany Elkelany, Tanir Ozcelebi, and Nirvana Meratnia Abstract— The increasing bandwidth require- ment of new wireless applications has lead to Millimeter wave sensing applications standardization of the millimeter wave spec- trum for high-speed wireless communication. Human Object Environment Position Health-related Action Sudden and harmful Identification and Position Harmful event Identification Acquisition Inspection Monitoring The millimeter wave spectrum is part of 5G and tracking monitoring recognition event detection classification tracking detection Power Parking space Foreign covers frequencies between 30 and 300 GHz Shape Localization Vital sign Activity Fall Speech Target Pen lines information debris Head Bathroom Drone Hazardous Gait Tracking Sleep Obstacle Drones corresponding to wavelengths ranging from 10 motion accident propellers terrain Hand Bird Disease Presence Traffic to 1 mm. Although millimeter wave is often gesture wingbeats Ego- Concealed Pose Pedestrian considered as a communication medium, it has motion objects Surface Lap joints also proved to be an excellent ‘sensor’, thanks cracks Building to its narrow beams, operation across a wide cracks bandwidth, and interaction with atmospheric Radar Signal reconstruction and denoising White box constituents. In this paper, which is to the best Millimeter Signal Signal transformation Manual Math./physics- Grey box Performance Pre- domain Feature mapping driven metrics Active Imaging Wave based Modeling Evaluation Model processing Data Extraction Automatic of our knowledge the first review that com- Signal Collection Data reconstruction and denoising Data-driven improvement Spatial Sweeping domain mapping Shallow black box Data transformation and tuning Deep black box pletely covers millimeter wave sensing appli- Dataset creation and augmentation cation pipelines, we provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of different basic appli- cation pipeline building blocks, including hardware, algorithms, analytical models, and model evaluation techniques. The review also provides a taxonomy that highlights different millimeter wave sensing application domains. By performing a thorough analysis, complying with the systematic literature review methodology and reviewing 165 papers, we not only extend previous investigations focused only on communication aspects of the millimeter wave technology and using millimeter wave technology for active imaging, but also highlight scientific and technological challenges and trends, and provide a future perspective for applications of millimeter wave as a sensing technology. Index Terms— 5G, analytical modeling, millimeter wave, millimeter wave sensing application pipeline, radar, systematic literature review. I. INTRODUCTION The increasing bandwidth requirement has lead to stan- dardization of the millimeter wave spectrum for high-speed NTRODUCTION of new wireless applications, their higher wireless communication in the IEEE 802.11ad, 802.11aj, and I service quality requirements, and a significant increase 802.11ay amendments [4]–[6]. The millimeter wave is also of application users have put continuous demand on digital part of the fifth-generation mobile communication technology wireless communication bandwidth. To address this, Netflix (5G) [7], [8]. Although use of the millimeter wave spectrum and YouTube, for instance, have reduced video streaming for communication is often directly associated with 5G, there quality in Europe to mitigate data traffic peaks in the 2.4 and arXiv:2012.13664v1 [eess.SP] 26 Dec 2020 are key differences. The millimeter wave spectrum is just one 5 GHz WiFi bands. These peaks are caused by an increased part of what 5G networks use to provide higher data rates. It amount of video and movie streams due to home confinement covers frequencies between 30 and 300 GHz corresponding measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. In the to wavelengths ranging from 10 to 1 mm [9], [10], located future, 8K video streaming will require a minimum data rate between the centimeter wave and terahertz wave spectrums. of 50 Mbps per TV. In case multiple simultaneous streams Thanks to covering a wide bandwidth and utilizing a short are launched on the same network, gigabit connections will wavelength, the millimeter wave spectrum is able to provide approach their limit [2]. Maintaining the required network higher data rates compared to other widely used wireless bandwidth and processing speed remains challenging for cloud technologies such as WiFi. Compared to the spectrum in which gaming as a service [3]. 5 GHz WiFi operates, the bandwidth of the millimeter wave spectrum is 10x higher, i.e., 270 GHz versus 27 GHz. Under B.R.D. van Berlo, A.M.A. Elkelany, T. Ozcelebi, and N. Merat- nia are with the Interconnected Resource-aware Intelligent Systems the assumption that environmental and legislative limitations cluster, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eind- do not exist, this means that the number of channels that can hoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands be created in the millimeter wave spectrum is also 10x more. (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Correspondence should be addressed to B.R.D. Because millimeter waves operate at much higher frequencies van Berlo. compared to the WiFi bands, the wavelengths are much 2 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXXX XXXX 1. Search 2. Explorative 3. Filter shorter. Consequently, the size of electronic components can Phase Classification Phase Phase be reduced. This, in turn, causes the beam emitted by elec- Additional paper tronic components to be much narrower. The narrow beams, in searches combination with greater signal attenuation compared to the 4. Pipeline Building Block Definition Phase WiFi bands, allow increased communication density [10], i.e., For every building block... number of messages communicated in parallel over separate Algorithms, models, hardware, etc. links with the same carrier frequency in a limited area. identification, review, and analysis Although millimeter wave is often considered as a commu- Deficiency and nication medium, it has also proved to be an excellent ‘sensor’ Summary error correction for humans, objects, and environmental sensing [9], [10], table creation thanks to its narrow beams, operation across a wide bandwidth, and interaction with atmospheric constituents. Narrow beams Paragraph, classification table, result in greater sensing resolution and directivity. A wide and figure formulation bandwidth and specific penetration, reflection, and attenuation reactions to different materials allow distinguishing different Fig. 1. Review process block diagram objects and humans [11], [12]. However, using millimeter waves in sensing applications also has disadvantages. Signals at extremely high frequen- techniques for each of the identified millimeter wave cies suffer from significant attenuation. Millimeter waves can sensing application pipeline building blocks. therefore hardly be used for long-distance applications [13]. • Identifying commonalities, gaps, and shortcomings of The financial cost of deploying a millimeter wave sensing current studies and solutions focusing on the use of system, e.g., on a vehicle, is still high even though this millimeter wave as a sensing technology. cost is projected to decrease in the future [14]. Millimeter • Highlighting scientific and technological challenges and waves also suffer significant penetration loss through solid trends, and providing a future perspective for applications materials like concrete. As rain-drops are comparable in size of millimeter wave as a sensing technology. to the wavelength of millimeter waves, heavy rain can cause The review is organized as follows: Section II explains considerable attenuation due to scattering [9], [10]. the review methodology. Section III establishes an application The applications that use millimeter waves utilize a wide taxonomy based on the research papers that report on millime- variety of hardware and algorithms for data collection, data ter wave sensing. Section IV identifies the common building pre-processing, feature extraction, feature analysis, analytical blocks that make up the application pipelines presented in the modeling, and modeling evaluation. This paper provides a millimeter wave sensing papers. It also presents a thorough comprehensive overview and analysis of millimeter wave analysis of the wide variety of hardware, algorithms, analytical sensing application pipelines and basic building blocks, in- models, and model evaluation techniques across these papers cluding hardware, algorithms, analytical models, and model in the respective building blocks. Section V identifies and evaluation techniques, offers an insight into challenges and explains the challenges and trends, and provides a future trends, and provides a future perspective for applications perspective for applications of millimeter wave as a sensing of millimeter wave as a sensing technology. Therefore, the technology. Finally, Section VI concludes the paper. review has struck a balance between the amount of details that are provided for each millimeter wave sensing application II. REVIEW METHODOLOGY pipeline building block and does not elaborate on details of We have conducted this review with a specific process each application domain and algorithm