As human-computer interaction (HCI) advances, gesture recognition has emerged as a transformative technology for human-computer interaction. Traditional methods, often camera or glove-based, are restricted by various environmental conditions and user-specific demands, highlighting the need for more universal, non-intrusive, and sustainable solutions. Addressing this, we present PowerGest, a self-powered gesture recognition system based on a solar cell array. This innovative system leverages the dual functionalities of solar cells: energy harvesting and gesture sensing, providing an alternative to conventional methods. It integrates a designed low-powered data acquisition chip with a wireless transmission module and a user-friendly interface. PowerGest employs a series of signal processing methods and utilizes several machine learning algorithms, achieving over 97% accuracy for both numeric input and activity control gesture recognition tasks. With its broad applications in robotic control, text input, and more, PowerGest contributes to a more sustainable and intuitive HCI experience. Project demo: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10KEul8PAfvTUomi0JvZ8u411JyScCXQI?usp=sharing.

The demand for accurate and real-time indoor localization and human sensing is rising with the development of smart environments, with applications in security and smart homes. Effective systems enhance safety, energy efficiency, and user experience by leveraging existing infrastructure, reducing deployment costs, and integrating seamlessly. Traditional methods rely on dedicated hardware, while communication or lighting infrastructure can provide dual-purpose solutions. This research focuses on Visible Light Communication (VLC) technology, which uses visible light for data transmission. Our VLC system utilizes existing lighting infrastructure to transmit data, providing localization and human sensing functionalities. The system design strategically incorporates specific VLC transmitters and receivers to enhance sensing performance. The collected data is processed using advanced algorithms and machine learning models, ensuring robust, real-time, and cost-effective localization with an accuracy of 96.6% and human activity recognition with an accuracy of 98.3%. This multi-functionality system demonstrates the potential for VLC in healthcare monitoring and home automation applications.

SolarSense is a self-powered sensing system for gesture recognition using solar cell arrays, thereby offering a sustainable approach to human-computer interaction (HCI) within industrial settings. The system effectively employed the sensing and energy harvesting capabilities of solar cells, achieving over 97.0% accuracy in recognizing diverse gestures. The design incorporates a low-power wireless data acquisition chip, a signal processing framework, and a user interface to realize robotic control and text input applications. SolarSense enhances HCI with its eco-friendly and user-centric approach, which is suitable for Internet of things (IoT) scenarios. Demo: https://youtu.be/RmPolChw_c4.

The non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) method is seen as one of the advantageous strategies for radio access that promises improved spectral efficiency in the fifth generation mobile networks (5G). This paper proposes an integrated broadcast and communication networks architecture based on NOMA, in which the physical channels of the cellular base stations are divided into two layers: one layer brings reinforced broadcast signals to the weakest areas of the broadcast tower and forms a single-frequency network transmission with it; the other layer provides diverse unicast services to users. In order to evaluate the spectral efficiency and coverage performance of the above system, an optimization problem based on the integrated spectrum revenue of the system is proposed. To maximize the objective function, the power allocation factors of the cellular base stations are optimized using the genetic algorithm. The simulation results validated that the system architecture is capable of integrating broadcast towers and cellular base stations to provide more reliable coverage of broadcast service and improve spectrum efficiency.