Open-source software has played a substantial role in the world. It (especially Linux related) can be found in the cloud (data center infrastructure), in your pocket (phones) and in many machines (TV set, home routers, etc.). The open-source has empowered researchers, developers, SMEs and big companies to build many innovative applications.

But in the hardware domain, especially for the connectivity chips (cellular, Wi-Fi, etc.), it is an almost (if not totally) close-source ecosystem. It is very difficult for researchers, developers and SMEs to do innovation in depth into the connectivity chip domain. The openwifi project (https://github.com/open-sdr ), an open-source Wi-Fi chip design currently running in FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), has changed this situation!

The openwifi design, supports Wi-Fi4 and Wi-Fi6, and has exactly the same functionalities as the commercial WiFi devices/APs. Many researchers/developers from all over the world have studied the source code on github and done many innovations on it. The openwifi project has become rank 2 on github Verilog topic: https://github.com/topics/verilog . (Verilog is the most popular chip design language).

In this demonstration, you can use your own devices (phones/tablets/laptop) connecting the openwifi AP to experience the open-source Wi-Fi “chip”. You will also see one of many “super power” of it: Wi-Fi sensing. When people walk around or change their gestures, a real-time CSI (Channel State Information) will also change on the screen. Interested researchers could use this data for further machine learning or artificial intelligence processing to do localization, health care (heart rate, breathing) and security research.