Mobile Communication Among COTS IoT Devices via a Resonant Gyroscope With Ultrasound

Incompatible protocols and electromagnetic interference obstruct the realization of an everything-connected Internet of Things (IoT) communication network. Our system, Deaf-Aid, utilizes a stealthy speaker-to-gyroscope channel to build robust communication. Compared with existing solutions adopting physical covert channels, Deaf-Aid is free from the limitations of manual receiver distinction, additional hardware, conditional placement, or physical contact. It exploits ultrasounds to force gyroscopes embedded in receivers to resonate, so as to convey information. We investigate the relationship among axes in a gyroscope to deal with frequency offset and support multi-channel communication. Meanwhile, receivers are identified automatically via device fingerprints consisting of diversity of gyroscopes’ resonant frequency ranges. Furthermore, we enable Deaf-Aid the capability of mobile communication, which is an essential demand for IoT devices. We address the challenge of recovering accurate signals from motion interference. Extensive evaluations, including that on the commercial off-the-shelf devices, demonstrate that Deaf-Aid yields 47 bps with BER below 1%. To our best knowledge, Deaf-Aid is the first work to enable stealthy mobile IoT communication based on inertial sensors.