Introduction

Cognitive Systems Corp., which provides pioneering Wi-Fi sensing technology, WiFi Motion, has redefined how people interact with wireless networks by using existing Wi-Fi signals to transform connected devices into motion sensors.

Cognitive System’s Wi-Fi Sensing technology constitutes a comprehensive software stack that can be effortlessly deployed onto an access point or client device, which enables motion sensing for a wide array of applications across any Wi-Fi-enabled environment. This technology operates seamlessly without the need for additional hardware, utilizing sophisticated algorithms for channel state information analysis, motion pattern detection, and real-time signal interpretation. Potential applications for this motion sensing technology include home monitoring, eldercare, and smart home automation.

With Cognitive Systems’ widespread deployment and operational reach, particularly in densely interconnected environments where high reliability and low latency are imperative for a multitude of applications, the integration of WiFi Motion with an efficient and scalable container orchestration service emerged as an absolute imperative.

The evolution from a single server

In the footsteps of many budding start-ups, Cognitive started their journey on a smaller scale using a single server. However, as their Wi-Fi Sensing solution gained traction, the surge in deployments gradually escalated demand on this solitary server, necessitating a scalable solution. This led Cognitive to adopt Kubernetes—a robust system capable of efficiently managing multiple servers.

However, as deployments scaled, Cognitive encountered challenges that proved far from simple, going beyond basic computer troubleshooting. This led to countless hours spent on the phone with human customer support agents, and Cognitive knew there must be a better option.

The quest for a more responsive partner

As the complexities of managing their growing Wi-Fi sensing technology grew, so did Cognitive’s demand for swift and effective customer support. Recognizing the need for a more robust solution, Cognitive explored cloud providers. In this pursuit, Amazon Web Services (AWS) emerged as a standout candidate. What sets AWS apart is not only its cutting-edge infrastructure but also its human-centric approach to customer support—a pivotal shift from their previous solution as Cognitive now had knowledgeable professionals at their disposal capable of promptly addressing issues and aiding in troubleshooting.

In 2019, Cognitive started their journey on AWS’s newly launched Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). The frequency of updates, global reach over multiple AWS Regions, and resource efficiency underscored the potential for ongoing growth and innovation within the platform. Transitioning to Amazon EKS therefore seemed natural to secure a reliable, scalable, and well-managed future for WiFi Motion.

Global expansion and latency woes

When Cognitive’s sales team expanded their focus to Europe and Asia, a fresh set of challenges emerged. To illustrate the potential applications of WiFi Motion to their service provider clients, Cognitive created two sample mobile phone application offerings—Home Aware and Caregiver Aware—to showcase how a service provider could seamlessly integrate Wi-Fi sensing into their offerings. Both applications centered around a key feature named Live Motion, which enables users to visualize ongoing motion within their homes through the application in real time.

The effectiveness of this feature relied heavily on low latency, specifically under 250 ms, to guarantee smooth functionality. Moreover, seamless navigation through the prototype app was paramount, particularly since these test apps were frequently employed in service providers’ Wi-Fi sensing trials.

While the latency between North America and Europe maintained a tolerable margin at around 200 ms, Asia posed a far more substantial obstacle. Given the vast geographical expanse, latency consistently surpassed acceptable thresholds, resulting in delays of over a second. Regrettably, this disparity led to adverse user experiences. This led Cognitive to explore AWS’ vast regional presence to provide low latency and improve the user experience.

Using Amazon EKS: A game-changing AWS Region in Tokyo

Amazon EKS’s global reach across multiple AWS Regions played a pivotal role in addressing these latency challenges. With the availability of an AWS Region in Tokyo, Cognitive effectively extended its presence into Asia. The results were remarkable: sample application evaluators, who had previously encountered performance issues, were now enjoying seamless interactions. Amazon EKS was instrumental in turning Cognitive’s vision of a worldwide revolution in Wi-Fi innovation into reality, which made motion sensing accessible to any Wi-Fi connected space. This global accessibility is crucial for Wi-Fi sensing to become the next transformative advancement for the ubiquitous technology of Wi-Fi, which has long been synonymous with communication.

Choosing to standardize on AWS and Amazon EKS yielded benefits beyond addressing latency concerns. The abundant talent pool familiar with AWS facilitated easier hiring while relying on off-the-shelf components of Kubernetes lightened our workload. With a small team, Cognitive was able to efficiently manage 10 Amazon EKS clusters (and counting) today. This efficiency was further highlighted by the absence of live pager duty; the cloud’s inherent self-healing capabilities ensured continuous system operation.

Amazon EKS empowered Cognitive by providing the foundational elements to develop self-monitoring and self-recovery functions, minimizing the need for extensive engineering resources. This approach, combined with AWS’s built-in healing mechanisms like Managed Node groups, mitigated the impact of sporadic server and network failures inevitable at our global scale. By focusing on maintaining desired states, the system proactively guided itself back to optimal conditions, conserving valuable man-hours.

Solution overview

Cognitive Systems’ implementation

Figure 1: High-level solution architecture

The previous figure illustrates Cognitive Systems’ high-level solution architecture. Data from the Internet of Things (IoT) nodes is routed to the nearest region using the Amazon Elastic Load Balancing Network Load Balancer, while client application requests are routed to Kubernetes services exposed through the Application Load Balancer (ALB). The routing of traffic to the nearest AWS Region is typically managed in a customer-specific manner, with a common practice being the utilization of Amazon Route 53. While customer-specific configurations vary, Amazon Route 53 often serves as the foundational layer. Additionally, Amazon Route 53 is instrumental in implementing High Availability (HA) within a specific region. To establish a robust, secure, and reliable communication channel between Cognitive’s IoT fleet and the Cloud, they employ MQTTS (MQTT + mutual TLS) facilitated by AWS Network Load Balancers. Additionally, AWS Lambda functions are employed for executing Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) operations on collected data, which is stored on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Amazon Athena and Metabase helped Cognitive gain and visualize insights from the transformed data. The same architecture is replicated across multiple regions to provide low latency and meet quality standards.

Automation scripts and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) pipelines have been developed, facilitating the replication of this architecture across various clusters and global regions with ease.

Conclusion

In this blog post, Mike Ravkine discussed how Cognitive Systems Corp. leveraged Amazon EKS to bring their innovative Wi-Fi Sensing technology, WiFi Motion, to reality. It outlined the evolution of Cognitive’s technology, challenges faced in latency when expanding globally, and how Amazon EKS addressed these issues. The post emphasized the benefits of using AWS for scalability, efficient management, and global reach, ultimately enabling Cognitive Systems to revolutionize Wi-Fi innovation and make motion sensing accessible worldwide.

Adopting a standard, like Amazon EKS and other services, allowed Cognitive Systems to seamlessly integrate with large customers already on the AWS cloud, significantly reducing the once-present barriers of networking, authentication, and authorization. The establishment of a secure, private link between Cognitive and its customers via AWS effectively manages typical security requirements, rendering compliance and privacy considerations more manageable and cost-effective. Cognitive conducts prototypes and trials using the public internet due to its expediency and accessibility. However, when transitioning to production, they use shared Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPC) and PrivateLink, as these options offer enhanced security measures and cost-effectiveness.

The partnership between Cognitive Systems and AWS, with a robust, globally accessible infrastructure, facilitated efficient scalability, intricate problem-solving, and the delivery of exceptional services. As Cognitive’s global reach expands and its customer relationships deepen, AWS and Amazon EKS continues to empower them to achieve more with fewer resources while upholding unparalleled quality and reliability.

To learn more about Cognitve Systems and WiFi Motion, visit www.cognitivesystems.com.

The whitepaper “Cognitive Systems Confidential: How WiFi Motion Can Play With Other Security Solutions” explores the integration of Cognitive Systems’ Wi-Fi Sensing solution, WiFi Motion, into the realm of home security.

As the demand for reliable and comprehensive security solutions grows, security providers are strategically adopting WiFi Motion to enhance their offerings. WiFi Motion seamlessly transforms existing routers and devices into a comprehensive motion sensing network, enabling over-the-air upgrades and adapting to evolving security needs.

The whitepaper outlines four key strategies for service providers looking to incorporate WiFi Motion into their offerings: upselling to premium security, monetizing DIY security with added features, streamlining existing services, and integrating new context into professional security.

By leveraging WiFi Motion’s innovative capabilities, security providers can enhance user experiences, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive revenue growth. WiFi Motion holds significant potential to revolutionize the home security landscape and urges security providers to embrace its capabilities for successful differentiation and innovation in a dynamic market.

To learn more about Cognitive Systems, click here to visit their website.

The concept of the Renaissance man is not new. Human ambition has fervently pursued discovery and exploration for centuries. But, in that era of rapid technological advancement, being a specialist was no longer sufficient. Over 700 years later, it has become a popular business trend to establish oneself as a foundational hub with a core technology or idea before branching out into other industries to demonstrate a broader level of competence.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have long aimed to enter new markets, akin to Renaissance Men, but have faced obstacles due to their internal teams lacking access to the proper resources, their unfamiliarity with target markets outside of their own, their risk aversion from previous failures, and stiff competition.
ISPs are interested in expanding into the eldercare market as the aging baby boomer generation offers a lucrative potential revenue stream, but creating a unique healthcare solution for wellness monitoring or aging-in-place can be both time-consuming and costly for telecommunications organizations. ISPs face difficulty in selecting eldercare industry models to follow, given that healthcare giants benefit from extensive research and market experience, as well as sufficient funds and resources. Meanwhile, following the examples of more high-risk health tech startups may not be suitable for ISPs lacking scientific or technological expertise. Cognitive believes ISPs can instead fill the gaps in the eldercare market by leveraging their core technology, WiFi, to roll out new services.

There is no universal solution for ISPs to create new services. However, there are core design philosophies that can aid in creating an effective eldercare solution. To be successful, ISPs must carefully consider four key factors.

1. Health Tech Must Be Simple

It is important that any wellness monitoring solution be simple enough that anyone with any level of understanding can use it effectively. Health technology is frequently innovative and evolving, making it unfamiliar to many end users, especially seniors, who make up a large majority of end users for wellness monitoring solutions. Historically, this is a demographic that is less tech-savvy, more risk-averse, and generally apprehensive about the learning curve. Many seniors would struggle to set up and configure new systems and have significant generational biases towards new technology. These biases, such as privacy concerns, can prove difficult for a senior to navigate if they have to interact with the wellness monitoring solution themselves daily. As well, consumers are often looking for a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach to monitoring. A quick and easy setup process is crucial for both seniors and caregivers setting up a system. Lengthy setup times or extensive customer support interactions can lead to frustration. Hence, expedient and seamless setup processes are vital for a positive user experience. As a result, an ISP should consider that wellness monitoring technology must be designed with the assumption that end users need simple applications. An application that is easy to use and set up will increase user adoption, improve customer satisfaction, and therefore create more loyal customers.

2. Eldercare for More Than Just the Frail

Seniors who aim to preserve their independence as they age often think that eldercare or wellness monitoring solutions are solely for those who are frail, ill, or whose health has affected their lifestyle. Also known as illusory superiority, most people believe they are still healthy and active enough to not require an eldercare solution. There is also a societal stigma associated with aging, which can make encouraging a broader demographic to use wellness monitoring solutions difficult. With proactive healthcare models on the rise, consumers are seeing the need now more than ever to take steps towards improving their health before things get bad or when they are still healthy enough to install such systems. Early introduction of wellness monitoring solutions is paramount, as health issues often develop slowly and are difficult to detect without historical data. Establishing a healthy baseline is important to identify deviations and monitor health trends, providing valuable information for caregivers and healthcare professionals.

The primary objective is for ISPs to educate their users on the value of eldercare, not solely for seniors with debilitating conditions but also for those in good health. By encouraging seniors to acquire a monitoring solution earlier in their retirement, ISPs can benefit from extended recurring monthly revenue streams. Typically, seniors only acquire eldercare solutions once their health has started to decline, leading to a limited revenue collection window for providers. Hence, the potential for long-term revenue from early wellness monitoring adoption is substantial. ISPs need to bridge the gap between fitness trackers for younger audiences (FitBit, Apple Watch, etc.) and those for senior populations (Life Alerts, etc.).

3. The Potential of the Baby Boomers

The baby boomer generation is massive and rapidly approaching retirement age. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it is projected that all baby boomers will have passed the age of 65 by 2030 – a demographic estimated at 71.6 million people in the US alone. The following generation, Generation X, is significantly smaller. That means the demand for eldercare will be much greater than previous generations could support, whether due to a lack of support workers, insufficient infrastructure, or a lack of funds.

The baby boomer generation’s impending mass retirement will place significant strain on healthcare resources across the industry. Thus, it is beneficial for ISPs to develop services that can cater to this vast demand to future-proof their offerings. Just as proactive healthcare is preferable to reactive healthcare, ISPs do not want to be caught lagging behind. The technology that will be dominant within the next five years may very well already exist; it just needs incubation time to further develop and expand. Therefore, ISPs need to plan for this new technology now by upgrading their hardware, adding new functionalities, and taking their infrastructure to the next level. There is an enormous opportunity for ISPs to gain substantial market share by catering to healthy individuals who wish to age in place.

4. “One-Size-Fits-All” Does Not Work

Every human being is as complex and one-of-a-kind as a snowflake. As a result, their specific healthcare needs are determined by a variety of influencing factors, such as their physiology, lifestyle, medical history, and so on. Even within the same family, two people may have very different needs. A company, on the other hand, cannot create a solution with every possible end application, need, or use case in mind. It is recommended that solutions be scalable and customizable, capable of accommodating users’ unique and changing needs over time. After all, no one knows us better than we know ourselves.

While creating a generic, catch-all eldercare solution may initially appeal to an ISP as a cost-efficient approach, launching a single baseline solution without the flexibility for growth will leave end users feeling dissatisfied in the long run. Instead, ISPs should be creating an initial solution with the full power of an evolving product roadmap that will enable them to build out add-ons that can more uniquely and effectively meet a customer’s needs. For long-term customer satisfaction and future service development, ISPs must recognize that a “one-size-fits-all” approach in health tech is inadequate.

Expansion is Inevitable

ISPs recognize that new innovation in their industry is required to keep their competitive advantage. However, past failures to expand have made ISPs wary of entering new markets such as eldercare or healthcare. The main problem is that, historically, ISPs have tried to enter the healthcare industry by acting more like health tech companies than like the ISPs that they are.

The principal obstacle for ISPs is the intense competition posed by organizations in the aging in place or eldercare markets that already possess relative knowledge and resources. Consequently, ISPs should adopt a distinct approach to tackle this challenge, harnessing their most valuable resource, WiFi. By capitalizing on their strengths, ISPs can position their new market solutions as integral components of their service offerings. Wi-Fi Sensing is a technology that can help service providers address many of these gaps while building out an effective solution that meets these key considerations.

Wi-Fi Sensing is a low-risk and cost-efficient solution that offers ISPs enhanced flexibility thanks to its software-based architecture. Its over-the-air update capability allows for simple maintenance and feature enhancements. Leading solutions, such as Cognitive’s WiFi Motion, were designed with these considerations in mind. For example, Cognitive’s sample application, Caregiver Aware, Caregiver Aware, is a streamlined, user-friendly tool that provides caregivers with all the data they need to care for their loved ones without disrupting their seniors’ lives. As demonstrated by Caregiver Aware, Wi-Fi Sensing can power an intuitive eldercare application that requires no additional expensive hardware or intrusive cameras. By partnering with Cognitive, ISPs can leverage their pre-existing telecommunications expertise and WiFi infrastructure to create an effective solution that resonates with their customers. This enables ISPs to focus on their core competency, WiFi, while Cognitive handles the rest.

Collaboration enables ISPs to increase customer retention, lower costs and offer new, valuable features to their customers

22 February 2023 – A trio of technology companies are coming together to drastically improve broadband services for Internet Service Providers and their customers.

Lansweeper, the leader in Asset Discovery and Recognition technology; Domos, the global leader in Latency Management for Internet Service Providers; and Cognitive Systems Corp., the leader in Wi-Fi Sensing technology, have joined forces to provide telecom companies with intelligent, value-added services to dramatically enhance customers’ internet experience.

The trio believes that, as the industry becomes increasingly competitive, it is no longer sufficient for ISPs to differentiate themselves solely through increased bandwidth or improved Wi-Fi performance.

The collaboration aims to help ISPs stand out in the market and deliver exceptional solutions to their customers by leveraging a joint ecosystem of specialized, industry-leading technologies.

With each partner’s distinctive technologies working in concert, ISPs stand to gain unparalleled insight into their customers’ device infrastructure, internet and application usage, spatial awareness, end-to-end network quality, and more.

The collaboration will also improve overall network performance by combining latency management to reduce data transmission delays and enable application awareness, device recognition to identify and classify different types of devices on a network, and WiFi Motion to better understand how device placement impacts WiFi performance.

Combining the three applications allows users to optimize and prioritize the performance of their online applications, help customer service agents diagnose problems more effectively, and enable Service Providers to leverage customer insights to introduce new products and services.

Together, the technologies promise to bring services such as streaming, remote work, and online video gaming to the next level, while also enabling ISPs to increase customer retention, reduce operational costs, and upsell new features and services.

The ultimate goal of the collaboration is to provide value-added services to ISPs through spatial, device, and application outcome awareness so that they can launch new tools and services and transform and elevate the customer’s connected experience, the companies said.

Speaking on the news, Amanda Forsyth, Director of Product at Cognitive Systems, said: “Through this collaboration, Service Providers will be able to go beyond basic connectivity and provide an elevated experience for their users. We’re working together to ensure that our technologies are not just compatible, but also work together to unlock even greater capabilities.”

“Together with Lansweeper and Cognitive Systems, we showcase the capabilities of the future Internet Service Provider,” Magnus Olden, CTO at Domos said.

“As ISPs can no longer rely on upping the megabit, they will look to our services to boost customer retention and expand their offerings. ISPs will gain unparalleled spatial, device, network quality, and application usage awareness from customers’ households, which means they can optimize their offerings for usage patterns and proactively engage through cohorted marketing. The services will also help reduce operational costs and improve customer support. In short, this collaboration will highlight how ISPs can deliver a better-connected experience while also driving efficiencies and revenue growth,” Olden said.

Patrizia Cozzoli, VP of Corporate Development at Lansweeper, said: “We are excited to collaborate with Domos and Cognitive Systems to revolutionize the way the internet is used and experienced. By combining our technologies, we aim to provide ISPs with powerful tools to improve network performance, increase efficiency, and deliver a personalized experience for their customers, creating the best internet experience possible. We are taking a major step forward in revolutionizing the internet experience for everyone, and we look forward to delivering the benefits of this partnership to ISPs and their customers.”

ENDS

About Lansweeper

Lansweeper is a leader in asset discovery and recognition technology, helping businesses better understand, manage and protect their connected devices and networks. The powerful device recognition technology used in this collaboration is developed by Fing. Lansweeper acquired Fing, the network scanning and device recognition app, in 2020 to extend and enhance its own network discovery capabilities. Today, Lansweeper offers several APIs across its technology portfolio to third parties to embed in their products and solutions. To learn more about Lansweeper’s embeddable technologies, including its database of over 1.4B uniquely identified devices, visit embedtech.lansweeper.com.

About Domos

Domos is the global leader in Latency Management for Internet Service Providers. Domos makes software for Internet Service Providers that can be embedded into any Customer Premises Equipment enabling application awareness and improved network quality, by monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing end-to-end latency in real time. The Internet Service Providers get access to unique insights into any bottlenecks in the customers’ WiFi or Broadband connection and can enable exclusive customer experiences and application integration to also have access to these insights to manage network optimization preferences. To keep up with everything Domos, follow the brand on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube, or visit domos.ai.

About Cognitive Systems

Cognitive Systems Corp. is on a mission to evolve how the world interacts with and uses WiFi. Its flagship technology, WiFi Motion™, transforms the existing wireless access points and devices in a home into a motion-sensing network to unlock new possibilities. WiFi Motion insights are used by service providers to power home security, caregiving, and smart home solutions, simply via a software upgrade and by leveraging the existing infrastructure already in the home. Learn more at www.cognitivesystems.com.

The great American poet, Maya Angelou, once said: “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” On the surface, this sentiment suggests the ability to balance self-care and the nurturing of important relationships in your life. But the reality is that juggling both can often be costly. In an emergency, airport personnel advise you to pull the oxygen mask over your own nose and mouth before assisting those around you. However, caregivers are frequently placed in situations where their concern for their loved one’s health and safety consumes them, often at the expense of their own health. One of the most difficult aspects of caregiving is deciding how much of yourself to give up to help others — a task that can seem especially daunting for one age group, the sandwich generation.

With both the senior and baby boomer generations expected to grow exponentially, there is a clear need for new solutions to support the ever-increasing demands on caregivers. COVID-19 compelled healthcare systems worldwide to be scrutinized in novel ways, exposing inherent flaws that demonstrated a need for change. The increased adoption of healthcare technology can be seen in the heightened presence of wearables like Fitbits and health apps. As well, in the wake of COVID-19, the world has a transformed perspective on how involved individual users want to be in monitoring their well-being.

Trying to Keep Too Many Plates Spinning

The “sandwich generation” is a group of people (usually in their 30s or 40s) who are responsible for raising their own children while also caring for their aging parents. According to a 2021 study, close to one in four Americans falls into this demographic, a figure that is expected to rise exponentially as the baby boomer generation ages. These caregivers’ attention is squished by competing priorities, much like the filling of a sandwich is contained by slices of bread. Trying to balance these priorities causes increased anxiety, stress, and, ultimately, guilt in sandwich generation caregivers.

The increased stress experienced by this sandwich generation is a major issue in terms of jeopardizing the quality of care, which hurts seniors and children. These caregivers struggle to find the time and emotional resources to be good spouses, parents, and children all at the same time.

The unique position of sandwich generation caregivers as actors in so many different roles frequently causes additional confusion and stress as they struggle to separate their caregiving role from their familial one.

They are prone to burnout and feelings of depression, guilt, and isolation as a result of their frustration with a lack of control in caring for their loved ones and unreasonable demands placed on their ability to provide care. Trying to keep that many plates spinning at once is a dangerous task that puts everyone involved in danger. Unfortunately, caregivers are frequently blind to the negative effects on their own mental and physical well-being, as well as the unavoidable negative effects on their loved ones.

How Can We Lighten Caregivers’ Plates?

The sheer amount of time and resources required to care for a loved one is one of the leading causes of caregiver burnout. Regular check-ins, doctor’s appointments, emergency drop-bys, and the like all take up time, as does worrying about their loved ones when they’re not together. Multiply this burden by two when caring for one’s children and parents, and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Caregivers should not be ashamed of their inability to manage all of these responsibilities; rather, they should look to technology to simplify, streamline, and improve their caregiving.

We cannot be everywhere at once. Remote health monitoring solutions help solve this problem by allowing caregivers to monitor their loved ones whenever and wherever it fits into their hectic schedule. Intelligence-driven insights allow caregivers to be more efficient with their time, knowing when to check in on their elderly parents to prevent a critical health event. These types of solutions help to meet the growing demand from seniors who want to age in place, which can put a strain on family caregivers who may not live nearby. Many remote health monitoring solutions will also need to provide behavioural insights, which assist caregivers in tracking their loved one’s health and taking proactive measures when necessary.

Cognitive’s Wi-Fi Sensing technology, WiFi Motion, can be used to provide a robust remote monitoring solution to assist caregivers. WiFi Motion is a layer of intelligence being added to WiFi that has the ability to interact with other connected devices (e.g., wearables, security systems, pill dispensers) and can be combined with other health apps to create a more comprehensive customer experience. Our sample application, Caregiver Aware, provides peace of mind and insights into well-being while respecting the privacy, dignity, and independence of the senior(s) who are aging in place. Caregivers, for example, can check whether their senior parent has been up and moving in the morning by simply looking at an app dashboard on their phone. Similarly, they can receive custom alerts about their loved ones’ activity or sleeping patterns without having to drive over, call them, or rely on their loved ones’ initiative to reach out if there is a problem.

Caregivers want simple, accessible solutions that will allow them to reclaim some of their own time. They do not want to waste time configuring a complicated system that their elderly parents may not understand, misuse, or forget to charge or put on (in the case of a wearable). WiFi Motion, as evidenced by our sample Caregiver Aware app, can enable caregivers to play a less intrusive role in the lives of their loved ones, which is beneficial for caregivers who live far away from those they care for.

ISPs are Positioned to Relieve Caregiver Burnout

As mentioned above, there is a clear demand for tech solutions in the health and eldercare sectors, fueled by an ever-aging population and a growing generation that struggles to balance their own busy lives with caring for their loved ones. Therefore, wellness monitoring solutions need to be customizable, unobtrusive, and so simple to use that they can easily become an integral part of a caregiver’s life.

ISPs are well-positioned to capitalize on the growing need for health monitoring solutions, as they are already looking for new value-added services to entice and retain customers. ISPs can leverage their trusted relationships with their consumers to easily deliver new, high-value services via pre-existing channels and platforms. With WiFi Sensing-based caregiving solutions, ISPs can meet the booming demand while also positioning themselves to provide increased value with additional features as the technology continues to evolve. Wellness monitoring solutions, like Caregiver Aware, can significantly improve the health and happiness of the user. If an ISP can offer similar solutions to their subscribers, they can use the positive health benefits to boost customer satisfaction. Services utilizing WiFi Motion are essential for attracting new customers or retaining existing ones with exciting new applications.

Our sample Caregiver Aware application demonstrates how ISPs can leverage WiFi Motion to provide predictive, intelligent health monitoring, increasing customer satisfaction and laying the groundwork to roll out future services as they build a loyal and happy subscriber base. The market for cutting-edge healthcare technology is only going to grow. ISPs are uniquely positioned to offer empowering healthcare monitoring solutions that improve the quality of life for their customers, both caregivers, and patients alike.

Cognitive Systems Corp. has developed WiFi Motion, software that turns all your connected devices into motion sensors without installing any additional hardware. The software runs on WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 Internet routers to provide whole-home awareness of movement by sensing and deciphering small changes in WiFi signals travelling through the air.

“WiFi Motion is being offered as an optional service by more and more Internet Service Providers (ISPs),” said Bob El-Hawary, executive vice president of worldwide sales at Cognitive Systems. “Since January 2020, 120+ ISPs have installed WiFi Motion in approximately one million homes. The initial focus has been on home security applications.”

Currently, Cognitive Systems is refining its core WiFi sensing technology, and supporting partners on applications such as:

1. Home security – WiFi Motion provides alerts about unusual movements of residents and possible intruders to homeowner applications.
2. Smart home – WiFi Motion provides data about the presence of residents to help home automation software determine if lighting, blinds and temperature should be changed.
3. Wellness monitoring – WiFi Motion provides data about residents’ movement patterns to determine if support is required.

“We anticipate rapid growth in adoption of WiFi Motion as more ISPs offer the service and as more Smart Home vendors take advantage of the data,” said El-Hawary. “There are many future applications, such as home automation, expanded health applications, and data analytics, for WiFi-based motion detection.”

Cognitive Systems is a Waterloo, Ont. high-tech success story that too few are aware of. Since it was founded in 2014, it has set out to enhance the value of wireless signals. The co-founders drew upon their expertise in silicon design, radio frequency (RF), and cryptography to create a new way to interpret wireless signals. Cognitive Systems has achieved an enviable position of owning its entire intellectual property (IP) stack consisting of:

1. WiFi signal processing software.
2. Machine learning algorithms.
3. Predictive analytics software.
4. More than 150 awarded patents.

WiFi Motion appeals to homeowners because:

1. It adds value to multiple Smart Home applications without adding any new management tasks.
2. It requires no new hardware or wiring to be installed.
3. It doesn’t introduce a new vendor relationship into the family.

WiFi Motion appeals to ISPs because:

1. It offers multiple additional revenue streams from the same network infrastructure.
2. It’s easy to implement because it requires no new hardware and because the software fits easily into their software update distribution mechanism.
3. It reduces customer turnover.

Expect Cognitive Systems and ISPs to also turn their attention to businesses and government. They operate extensive facilities that can benefit from the same motion-sensing technology.

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The rapid pace at which technology advances can be compared to a boulder being pushed down a steep hill. It may start slowly at first, but as it rolls, it accelerates and gains momentum. Indeed, many people believe that technology is evolving faster in the twenty-first century than it ever has before, owing to the exponential growth of research that harnesses the many generations of brilliant minds and advancements that have come before us. WiFi and WiFi Sensing are similar. Despite the fact that commercial WiFi has only been available since the 1990s, WiFi is now being used in ways that were unimaginable just three decades ago. Our WiFi Sensing core technology, WiFi Motion, enables a slew of new home applications that are challenging smart home innovation, driving demand in new markets, and pushing the boundaries of connected devices.

In such a rapidly evolving field, it is critical to establish foundational processes, systems, and structures that ensure robust technology. A product must not only be intelligent but also dependable. WiFi Motion is no exception. That is why at Cognitive, we have always placed equal importance on AI (artificial intelligence) and QA (quality assurance) when building WiFi Motion. WiFi Sensing enables applications in some of the most intimate environments, like your home, where it is critical that services operate reliably to ensure customer comfort. We have drawn on our leadership team’s decades of QA and software testing experience to ensure that our approach to developing our WiFi Sensing technology and its various applications is as accurate and reliable as possible while working to learn alongside its users.

But How Have We Done That?
When WiFi Motion was in its early stages, QA’s role was to collaborate with development teams to provide confirmation that the technology was 1) effective and 2) making incremental progress. Our team knew from the start that WiFi Sensing, like WiFi, would be an ever-evolving technology with future applications. That is why we needed a strong QA foundation working closely with our development teams as we built from the ground up. Initial activity focused on establishing a set of WiFi Motion’s key performance indicators (KPIs) that were simple to understand and easy to measure. Because our leadership team’s expertise is firmly rooted in radio systems and chip design, we understood the significance of testing in a reliable and repeatable manner. Radiated measurements are especially vulnerable to measurement error, owing to high uncertainty factors. As a result, every effort was made to reduce testing uncertainties as much as possible. A unique challenge we faced in this area was that there were no industry agreed-upon KPIs or test methodologies available. Everything had to be developed from scratch, largely by us. Test cases and scenarios had to be developed not only to communicate performance to R&D teams but also to non-technical personnel who were unfamiliar with the fine details. To help ensure consistency, application test methodologies were developed to help guide testing in a manner such that results were repeatable regardless of deployment or environment.

There’s No Place Like Home: Variable Environments
In this vein, we have established a number of QA houses that represent realistic home environments in order to thoroughly test our technology with real people in real spaces. Our small and dedicated team focuses on putting themselves in the shoes of the end-user in order to evaluate performance and identify limitations. The industry has established well-defined KPIs such as data throughput, BER (Bit Error Rate), and RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) as indicators or measurements of WiFi communication performance. Anyone, including R&D teams, network professionals, technicians, and end users, can utilize common industry tools that measure data throughput or map a network’s RSSI operating environment to evaluate different scenarios. Because there are no industry standard KPIs, methodologies, or tools for WiFi Sensing, it has fallen to us to research and develop evaluation standards for other similar sensing technologies and develop the best possible equivalent. Recognizing this as a significant industry gap, we contributed our experience as well as a preliminary set of KPIs, test methodologies, and tool descriptions for publication in a WBA (Wireless Broadband Alliance) whitepaper. Our goal was for this work to serve as preliminary guidance for other companies looking to evaluate WiFi Sensing technology, as well as to provide input to the industry on what future testing and tools will be required as WiFi’s sensing capabilities expand.

How to Find the Right Setting for a Space
Sensing sensitivity, or the amount of motion needed for our system to classify something as motion, is another challenge inherent in WiFi Sensing. Our flagship technology, WiFi Motion, currently allows users to choose different sensitivity levels based on the type of home that they live in. Users can add filters to analyze types of motion in their home (i.e., pets, fans, etc.), allowing our algorithms to filter out “background noise” to ensure human motion detection is as accurate as possible. Algorithms that help ensure accurate and reliable sensing require tuning that could be unique to the environment or user preference. We want solutions that work in all environments while avoiding any false alarms. To accomplish this, we define and implement real-world scenarios in test environments. Raw sensing data is collected, stored, and labeled as each scenario is executed. Offline analysis and processing of the stored or labeled data allow R&D teams to fine-tune algorithm performance.

Advanced Insights with Localization
WiFi Motion’s localization feature is another crucial piece of the puzzle to ensure our Sensing outputs are accurate. Through localization, our users can determine where in their home motion was detected based on proximity to a connected device. Users can gain additional insights by being able to differentiate motion down to specific rooms. For example, does the fact that senior mom is spending more time than usual in the living room watching TV imply that she isn’t getting enough exercise? Or are your children not getting enough quality sleep because they wake up in the middle of the night? Localization also assists us in guiding users on how to best set up coverage in their homes so that both WiFi and WiFi Motion work as efficiently as possible. Similarly, we are also working on tools that may optimize network coverage, map home environments, and improve smart home functionality.

Rinse & Repeat: The Benefits of Iteration
In the WiFi Sensing space, QA and testing are critical for learning, in-house development, and building out the technology. We can iterate and adjust based on test and simulation data to provide a better end-user experience. As well, QA testing of our final deliverable ensures proper integration by validating overall system level requirements beyond Sensing performance. A solid QA test plan entails creating procedures to ensure a robust platform and comprehensive standards for WiFi Sensing. Standardization efforts will improve technology in tandem with established QA testing protocols. As WiFi itself continues to improve, so will the accuracy and reliability of WiFi Sensing. That means better coverage, localization accuracy, new gateway updates that don’t break things, and smoother firmware push transitions.

Testing the parameters of WiFi Sensing will help secure the technology’s future by ensuring that product quality does not deteriorate over time. To meet expectations, we will be able to introduce new features, capabilities, backward-compatible fixes, and so on. We understand that each WiFi Sensing environment is dynamic and one-of-a-kind. A strong QA process backed up by standardization will ensure companies meet minimal performance requirements.

The Future of WiFi is WiFi Sensing
Telecommunications and cable companies are actively seeking technologies such as WiFi Sensing to increase the value of their subscription packages while also introducing new services that will grow and retain their customer base. WiFi Motion is a powerful WiFi Sensing application into which we have poured years of testing and QA experience to ensure the best end-user experience. With the proliferation of WiFi 6/7 and the standardization efforts of 802.11bf, WiFi Sensing will soon be everywhere. ISPs can enter this growing market now to provide an extraordinarily unique edge. Our current partners are not only integrating motion sensing, they are designing their products around it. Most plan to gradually offer a number of sensing-based applications (such as Home Aware and Caregiver Aware) to improve customer service and engagement. By having actively deployed technology, our partners are gaining extremely valuable data through both testing and usage that will be foundational in improving the technology itself and shaping the future of WiFi. Those jumping into the technology before standardization will have more data to leverage and will find themselves years ahead of the competition.

If you’re a service provider looking for the next big tech breakthrough to help you differentiate, the time has come to act. As we write the WiFi Sensing rulebook through our QA process, early adopters will have the most influence on shaping the WiFi Sensing marketplace.