This paper is about designing a 3D no n-stationary wideband indoor channel model for radio-frequency sensing. The proposed channel model allows for simulating the time-variant (TV) characteristics of the received signal of indoor channel in the presence of a moving object. The moving object is modelled by a point scatterer which travels along a trajectory. The trajectory is described by the object's TV speed, TV horizontal angle of motion, and TV vertical angle of motion. An expression of the TV Doppler frequency caused by the moving scatterer is derived. Furthermore, an expression of the TV complex channel transfer function (CTF) of the received signal is provided, which accounts for the influence of a moving object and fixed objects, such as walls, ceiling, and furniture. An approximate analytical solution of the spectrogram of the CTF is derived. The proposed channel model is confirmed by measurements obtained from a pendulum experiment. In the pendulum experiment, the trajectory of the pendulum has been measured by using an inertial-measurement unit (IMU) and simultaneously collecting CSI data. For validation, we have compared the spectrogram of the proposed channel model fed with IMU data with the spectrogram characteristics of the measured CSI data. The proposed channel model paves the way towards designing simulation-based activity recognition systems.
Keywords: 3D no n-stationary channels; CSI; Wi-Fi 802.11n; channel state information; doppler frequency; indoor channels; inertial measurement units; micro-doppler effect; spectrogram.