Bojan Nikolic

DataSig

Improving COVID-19 contact tracing using wearable humidity sensors

<p>Existing technological solutions for contact tracing rely on transmission and reception of decimeter radio waves (2.4GHz/12cm/"Bluetooth"). Unsurprisingly there are frequent real-world situations where propagation of this  radiation is not a good predictor of transmission of a virus carried in an aerosol: e.g., a thin non-conductive barrier such as an  internal wall or window will hardly affect the radio waves while completely stopping the advection of  an aerosol.  I show that such shortcomings of radio-only contact tracing can be largely resolved by augmentation with additional sensor information, in particular with humidity and pressure measurements. Development of MEMS sensors, miniaturised storage and "IoT" technologies has made measurements of sufficient accuracy, storing and processing the data practical at surprisingly low cost. Therefore this technique provides feasible, efficient contact tracing in the near term for high-risk  settings with controlled access (e.g., hospitals, care homes, office buildings). In this talk I will describe the prototype data acquisition system that we built and the data processing strategy to improve the risk estimation in COVID-19 contact tracing. Potential impact on COVID-19 contact tracing in practice will be discussed. The research and development of this project has been supported by Innovate UK.</p><p></p>

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Bojan Nikolic

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Bojan Nikolic

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