Due to poor signal strength, multipath effects, and limited on-device computation power, common GPS receivers do not work indoors. This work addresses these challenges by using a steerable, high-gain directional antenna as the front-end of a GPS receiver along with a robust signal processing step and a novel location estimation technique to achieve direct GPS-based indoor localization. By leveraging the computing power of the cloud, we accommodate longer signals for acquisition, and remove the requirement of decoding timestamps or ephemeris data from GPS signals. We have tested our system in 31 randomly chosen spots inside five single-story, indoor environments such as stores, warehouses and shopping centers. Our experiments show that the system is capable of obtaining location fixes from 20 of these spots with a median error of less than 10 m, where all normal GPS receivers fail.

Due to poor signal-strength, multi-path effects, and a lack of adequate visible satellite vehicles (SV), GPS receivers do not work indoors. This work addresses these challenges by using a mechanically steerable, high-gain directional antenna as the front-end of the GPS receiver along with a robust signal processing technique to acquire satellites in indoor environments. Our experiment on a local warehouse shows that, the system is capable of acquiring 5 or more SVs (which is a requirement for instant GPS technique [4]), whereas a Garmin device barely sees 3, and the system is capable of estimating indoor locations with 3--18 m errors when compared to the ground truth.

A new technology breakthrough which allows any standard Bluetooth mobile phone to access information services using the same selective and deliberate gesture envisioned for NFC. This technology is called Bluetooth Touchpoint, and it consists of reconfigurable coverage that combines NFC-like, close-proximity communications with the long-range, roaming solution of today's Bluetooth devices. Phase shifting technology combined with a unique antenna configuration makes this realization possible. Therefore, as the world moves toward contactless, wireless communication links, it is believed that the near ubiquity of Bluetooth in mobile devices makes this technology an excellent choice for delivering the benefits of NFC today without the wait, effort and cost associated with adopting NFC globally.

We demonstrate the CLEO mobile sensing platform, including ultra-portable, low-power sensors, phone-based data upload software, and a location resolution and data management web service in the cloud. The sensing platform leverages cloud-offloaded GPS (CO-GPS) for location sensing. A sensor communicates with mobile devices using an audio-port-based connector. The back-end cloud service supports OData protocol to make data accessible to other systems, such as World-Wide Telescope (WWT).

Sleep is an important part of our lives which affects many life factors such as memory, learning, metabolism and the immune system. Researchers have found correlations between sleep and several diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease, Chronic Heart Failure, Alzheimer's disease, etc. However, sleep data is mainly recorded and diagnosed in sleep labs or in hospitals for some critical cases with high costs. In this work we develop a non-invasive, wearable neck-cuff system capable of real-time monitoring and visualization of physiological signals. These signals are generated from various sensors housed in a soft neck-worn collar and sent via Bluetooth to a cell phone which stores the data. This data is processed and reported to the user or uploaded to the cloud and/or to a local PC. With this system we are able to monitor people's sleep continuously in a non-invasive and low cost method while at the same time collect a large database for sleep data which may benefit future advances in new findings and possibly enable a diagnosis of other diseases. We show as one of the applications of our system the possible detection of obstructive sleep apnea which is a common sleep disorder.