Wireless Network Sensing (WNS)
Wireless network sensing uses data generated by local wireless communication networks to produce occupancy information based on people disturbing the messages between devices.
Like traditional sensors, it does not require the person to carry a device and simply senses their existence.
Unlike traditional sensors, it uses data typically used to diagnose network issues to perform the detections, and thus is done purely as a software/firmware layer on top of existing systems.
Technology Suite
sensify™ technology is a patented set of custom firmware and software packages that turn standard wireless communication devices into advanced occupancy sensing systems without adding to or changing their hardware. sensify™ technology allows commercially available wireless communication systems to derive information about human activity in a space using network diagnostic data.
sensify™ has sometimes been referred to as a “sensorless” sensor technology because it doesn’t rely on any new sensor hardware such as cameras, microphones, or other privacy-invading hardware and doesn’t track devices like phones, beacons or tags. We simply leverage human interaction with the RF environment to provide our partners with presence information to enable use cases like autonomous lighting control, advanced security, optimized HVAC, and more.
How It Works
sensify™ uses wireless communications from standard protocols like Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth®, Thread, and others to detect the presence of humans. These radio chips provide network diagnostic information from each wireless transmission which is typically used to aid with network formation and diagnose communications issues. sensify™ technology analyzes that same data to derive insightful human activity information for spaces in homes and professional environments alike.
We refer to the area bounded by a set of nodes as a detection area. sensify™ typically uses three to five nodes to define this detection area. Network diagnostic information is collected through communication between those devices and analyzed to make determinations about human occupancy in the detection area. When humans are present in a physical space, they impact the RF environment in ways which are detectable in the network diagnostic information using sensify™ algorithms.
Why sensify™?
sensify™ is a flexible platform technology that provides a wide array of advanced occupancy data without the use of invasive devices like cameras or microphones. This data can be in the form of real-time data used to increase efficiency, convenience, and safety by optimizing smart home, lighting control, security, HVAC, and more. In buildings, the data can also be batch-processed for historical snapshot views of the space to inform ongoing space utilization and capital expenditure decisions.
If that’s not enough, it’s extremely private, less expensive, more accurate, and 100% invisible compared to other sensors in its class.