Privacy-Aware Ambient Audio Sensing for Healthy Indoor Spaces
Bhawana Chhaglani
TL;DR
The paper addresses indoor airborne transmission risk by leveraging privacy-preserving ambient audio sensing to non-invasively estimate ventilation, aerosol emissions, and occupant distribution in real time. It introduces FlowSense for low-frequency vent-noise ventilation sensing, AeroSense for aerosol-emission inference from respiratory activities, and FeatureSense as a privacy library to minimize speaker leakage while preserving utility. The work provides real-time capabilities with quantitative performance benchmarks and discusses privacy frameworks to build trust in audio-based sensing. Collectively, these contributions enable scalable, privacy-aware monitoring of indoor airborne risk using everyday devices, with practical implications for ventilation management and health risk communication.
Abstract
Indoor airborne transmission poses a significant health risk, yet current monitoring solutions are invasive, costly, or fail to address it directly. My research explores the untapped potential of ambient audio sensing to estimate key transmission risk factors such as ventilation, aerosol emissions, and occupant distribution non-invasively and in real time. I develop privacy-preserving systems that leverage existing microphones to monitor the whole spectrum of indoor air quality which can have a significant effect on an individual's health. This work lays the foundation for privacy-aware airborne risk monitoring using everyday devices.