Liu and Graduate Students Win Best Student Paper at WF-IoT 2021

Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor K.J. Ray Liu and graduate students Yuqian Hu, Beibei Wang, and Chenshu Wu recently won the Best Paper award for their paper, “Universal Virtual Keyboard Using 60 GHz mmWave Radar” at IEEE’s 7th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT 2021). The event was held in an online/in-person format June 14-July 31 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Keyboards act as one of the most commonly used mediums for human-computer interaction, and today, massive IoT devices are designed without a physical keyboard as they go tiny, but are almost all equipped with a wireless module for networks.

“In this work, we aim to enable a universal virtual keyboard using wireless signals, which would allow a typing interface for tiny IoT devices or serve as a portable alternative to the unwieldy physical keyboards,” says Professor Liu. “To this end, we present mmKey, the first universal virtual keyboard system using a single millimeter wave (mmWave) radio. By leveraging the unique advantages of mmWave signals, mmKey converts any flat surface, with a printed paper keyboard, into an effective typing media. mmKey enables concurrent keystrokes and supports multiple keyboard layouts, such as a computer keyboard, piano keyboard, or phone keypad.”

WF-IoT 2021 brings the latest from the research and academic community. It includes a broad program of papers and presentations on the latest technology developments and innovations in the many fields and disciplines that drive the utility and vitality of IoT solutions and applications.

Last year, Liu, Wang, and former graduate students Feng Zhang and Chen Chen won the 2020 IEEE Internet of Things (IoT) Journal Best Paper Award for their work titled “WiSpeed: A Statistical Electromagnetic Approach for Device-Free Indoor Speed Estimation.” The researchers are using exclusive data from Liu’s startup, Origin Wireless, to conduct outstanding research.

Published August 9, 2021