A single-antenna WiFi router can now monitor a person's breathing with the precision of a clinical hospital-grade monitor.
April 25, 2026
Original Paper
High-Fidelity and Location-Robust Respiratory Waveform Monitoring with Single-Antenna WiFi
arXiv · 2604.20397
The Takeaway
Standard home routers can detect high-fidelity respiratory waveforms and biomarkers without any special hardware or wearable sensors. The system remains accurate even if the user is moving around or sitting in a different room from the device. Most previous attempts at WiFi sensing required multiple antennas and very specific positioning to get a clear signal. This breakthrough turns every home into a passive health clinic that can detect early signs of respiratory distress or sleep apnea. It provides a way for doctors to monitor vulnerable patients 24 hours a day without invading their privacy with cameras.
From the abstract
In recent years, WiFi sensing has been recognized as a promising technology to bring respiratory monitoring into everyday homes, thanks to its contactless nature and ubiquitous availability. However, existing WiFi-based respiratory monitoring systems still fall short of deployment-oriented performance: they suffer from restrained hardware scalability, limited accuracy, and are highly sensitive to user location. To overcome these limitations and push WiFi sensing towards clinically meaningful pre