This ESP32 Antenna Array Can See WiFi

An explanation of how the ESPARGOS project uses an array of low-cost ESP32 chips to measure WiFi signal phase and localize devices.

More information is available on the project website of the ESP32 antenna array "ESPARGOS": espargos.net/ Source code for Python library + demos: github.com/ESPARGOS/pyespargos (directory "demos/camera" for "WiFi camera" demo) As a research assistant at the Institute of Telecommunications at the University of Stuttgart, I work on multi-antenna systems like (distributed) massive MIMO, with a focus on wireless channel measurement platforms and algorithms for processing channel measurements (classical and deep learning-based). One day, my (incredibly talented) colleague Marc Gauger suggested to use ultra low-cost ESP32 chips instead of software defined radios for channel measurements. I was highly sceptical at first, but when he showed me a minimalistic prototype he had soldered together, I was intrigued by the idea of being able to demonstrate my algorithms in real time using WiFi signals. In a series of Bachelor's / Research theses, my excellent students Tim Schneider, David Engelbrecht and David Kellner helped me develop the ESP32 antenna array "ESPARGOS". Measured CSI dataset used for AoA / TDoA visualization: espargos.net/datasets/data/espargos-0005/ AoA / TDoA localization source code (needs some minor modifications to be applied to espargos-0005 dataset): github.com/Jeija/ToA-AoA-Augmented-ChannelCharting/ Channel Charting source code for the animation in the video: github.com/Jeija/Geodesic-Uncertainty-Loss-ChannelCharting Tutorial on Channel Charting: dichasus.inue.uni-stuttgart.de/tutorials/tutorial/dissimilar… My research on (distributed) massive MIMO, Channel Charting and other algorithms for multi-antenna systems is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the project Open6GHub (grant no. 16KISK019). I also want to express my gratitude towards ARENA2036, who hosted our measurement campaign for Channel Charting, and to my colleague and Channel Charting expert Phillip Stephan, with whom I co-authored several papers on Channel Charting and who assisted me with the creation of this video.