Anti-Sensing: Defense Against Unauthorized Radar-Based Human Vital Sign Sensing with Physically Realizable Wearable Oscillators
Md. Farhan Tasnim Oshim, Nigel Doering, Bashima Islam, Tsui-Wei Weng, Tauhidur Rahman
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 radarbased 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 networkbased HR sensing models, we demonstrate the effectiveness of Anti-Sensing in significantly degrading model accuracy, offering a practical solution for privacy preservation.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2025_antisensingdefen,
title = {Anti-Sensing: Defense Against Unauthorized Radar-Based Human Vital Sign Sensing with Physically Realizable Wearable Oscillators},
author = {Md. Farhan Tasnim Oshim and Nigel Doering and Bashima Islam and Tsui-Wei Weng and Tauhidur Rahman},
booktitle = {ICRA 2025},
year = {2025}
}