Anti-Sensing: Defense against Unauthorized Radar-based Human Vital Sign Sensing with Physically Realizable Wearable Oscillators
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
May 16, 2025
Abstract
Recent advancements in Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radar technology have enabled
contactless, non-line-of-sight vital sign monitoring, making it a valuable tool
for healthcare. However, UWB radar's ability to capture sensitive physiological
data, even through walls, raises significant privacy concerns, particularly in
human-robot interactions and autonomous systems that rely on radar for sensing
human presence and physiological functions. In this paper, we present
Anti-Sensing, a novel defense mechanism designed to prevent unauthorized
radar-based sensing. Our approach introduces physically realizable
perturbations, such as oscillatory motion from wearable devices, to disrupt
radar sensing by mimicking natural cardiac motion, thereby misleading heart
rate (HR) estimations. We develop a gradient-based algorithm to optimize the
frequency and spatial amplitude of these oscillations for maximal disruption
while ensuring physiological plausibility. Through both simulations and
real-world experiments with radar data and neural network-based HR sensing
models, we demonstrate the effectiveness of Anti-Sensing in significantly
degrading model accuracy, offering a practical solution for privacy
preservation.
