docs/research/ruview-beyond-sota/01-sota-landscape-2026.md
Series: ruview-beyond-sota (01)
Date: 2026-06-09
Status: Research survey / target definition
Builds on (does not duplicate): docs/research/sota-2026-05-22/00-summary.md (physics floors, placement, privacy chain), docs/research/BFLD/01-sota-survey.md (beamforming-feedback leakage SOTA), docs/research/neural-decoding/21-sota-neural-decoding-landscape.md (sensor-fidelity framing), docs/research/rf-topological-sensing/00-rf-topological-sensing-index.md (mincut/topology resolution limits), ADR-150 (RF foundation encoder + measured MM-Fi campaign), ADR-147 (OccWorld benchmark proof).
Every claim in this document carries one of three tags. No RuView benchmark number in this document is invented; all RuView numbers come from repo-internal measured artifacts.
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| [V] | Verified in this session via web search (June 2026); source linked in §8 |
| [K] | Training-knowledge claim (pre-2026 literature); plausible but not re-verified — treat as needing citation check before external publication |
| [I] | Internal RuView measurement or artifact (ADR, issue, witness bundle) — measured, not literature |
| Method | Year | Metric | Dataset / protocol | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DensePose From WiFi (Geng, Huang, De la Torre) | 2023 | Dense-pose UV regions from CSI, "comparable to image-based approaches" (same-layout); commonly cited AP≈43.5 / AP@50≈87.2 | 3×3 antenna, single-layout lab | exact AP numbers [K]; paper existence [V] (arXiv 2301.00250) |
| MetaFi++ (Zhou et al.) | 2023 | PCK@50 = 97.30% same-domain real-world (MetaFi: 95.23%); drops to 81.7–86.5% under stricter protocols | Own capture; protocol-sensitive | [V] |
| Person-in-WiFi 3D (CVPR 2024) | 2024 | End-to-end multi-person 3D; 20.4 M params, 54 FPS; MPJPE ≈ 90–100 mm on own dataset | Own multi-person dataset | FPS/params [V]; MPJPE range [K] |
| GraphPose-Fi (arXiv 2511.19105) | 2025 | SOTA on MM-Fi random split: MPJPE 160.6 mm, best PCK at all thresholds | MM-Fi, random split (S1) | [V] |
| CSDS (Electronics 14(4):756) | 2025 | Wi-Pose: PCK@5 = 0.6407, PCK@50 = 0.8824 | Wi-Pose | [V] |
| PerceptAlign (arXiv 2601.12252) | 2026 | Cross-layout 3D: MPJPE 222.4 mm (Scene 4) / 317.1 mm (Scene 5), >54% better than prior cross-layout SOTA; in easier settings MPJPE 181.5 mm, PCK@20/50 = 44.2/79.5 | Cross-layout protocol | [V] |
| WiFlow (arXiv 2602.08661) | 2026 | Lightweight continuous HPE, spatio-temporal decoupling | — | [V] (existence; numbers not extracted) |
| RuView / AetherArena | 2026 | 81.63% torso-PCK@20 in-domain (random split), beating MultiFormer's 72.25% on metric/protocol-matched MM-Fi; leakage-free cross-subject collapses to ~11.6% torso-PCK zero-shot; official-split harness baseline ~63–65% PCK@20; 11 KB LoRA few-shot calibration → 72.5% | MM-Fi (issue #876, ADR-150 §3) | [I] |
The honest reading of the pose axis: same-domain WiFi pose is "solved-looking" (PCK@50 in the 90s) and meaningless for deployment. The 2025–2026 literature has shifted to cross-layout/cross-subject protocols, where numbers collapse (PerceptAlign PCK@20 = 44.2 cross-layout [V]; RuView cross-subject zero-shot 11.6% [I]). ADR-150's measured finding — that the cross-subject gap is subject-distribution shift, not an algorithmic gap, and that few-shot in-room calibration (5–200 frames) closes it — is ahead of where the published literature is: no published WiFi-pose paper we found ships a per-room ~11 KB adapter calibration mechanism. [I]
| Method | Year | Metric | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large-scale commodity router deployment (>10 M routers) | 2025 | 92.6% motion-detection accuracy across diverse homes | [V] (ISAC survey, arXiv 2510.14358) |
| LeakyBeam (NDSS 2025) | 2025 | Occupancy through walls at 20 m from plaintext BFI alone: TPR 82.7%, TNR 96.7% | [V] (also in BFLD survey §4.2) |
| Time-Selective RNN multi-room presence (arXiv 2304.13107) | 2023 | Device-free multi-room presence from CSI | [V] (existence) |
| Academic person counting (0–5 occupants, lab) | 2020–2024 | typically 90–97% exact-count accuracy, degrading sharply >5 people | [K] |
| RuView | 2026 | cog-person-count ships with calibrated uncertainty (count_p95_low/high); multistatic placement recipe with 100% coverage for 1–4 occupants at N=5 nodes (synthetic physics) | [I] (sota-2026-05-22 R6.2.5, ADR-113) |
| Method | Year | Metric | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| PhaseBeat (ACM Health) | 2020 | HR median error 1.19 bpm; BR median error 0.25 breaths/min | [V] |
| MDPI Sensors 24(7):2111 non-contact HR | 2024 | HR accuracy 96.8%, median error 0.8 bpm | [V] |
| PulseFi (arXiv 2510.24744) | 2025 | Low-cost ML cardiopulmonary + apnea monitoring from CSI | [V] (existence; numbers not extracted) |
| mmWave FMCW vitals (60 GHz class) | 2023–2026 | HR MAE typically 1–3 bpm at 1–3 m, single subject; age-balanced reference dataset published (Sci Data 2026) | dataset [V]; MAE range [K] |
| Contactless blood pressure (WiFi-band) | — | NEGATIVE — below classical physics floor; recoverable only via quantum magnetometry path | [I] (R13/R20 arc, ADR-114) |
| RuView | 2026 | wifi-densepose-vitals (ADR-021) extracts HR/BR from ESP32 CSI; chest-centric placement gives +27 pp coverage for vitals cogs (synthetic) | [I] — no accuracy-vs-ECG validation number exists in-repo yet; do not claim one |
Bar: published single-subject, line-of-sight, 1–3 m WiFi HR is ~0.8–1.2 bpm median error [V]. Nobody credibly publishes multi-person, through-wall, walking-subject HR at that accuracy — that is open territory.
| Method | Year | Metric | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| 802.11mc FTM | shipped | 1–2 m typical accuracy | [V] (FTM survey, arXiv 2509.03901) |
| 802.11az (+ 802.11bk) | released | sub-1 m, 160 MHz channels, secured ranging, HE-LTF repetitions | [V] |
| AI single-link decimeter localization | 2025 | 0.63 m average error single-link, beating Widar2.0 / Dynamic-MUSIC | [V] |
| SpotFi / Chronos / Widar lineage | 2015–2021 | 0.4–1 m with multi-AP CSI AoA/ToF | [K] |
| RuView | 2026 | CRLB / Fisher-information machinery in ruvector/src/viewpoint/geometry.rs; tomography ISTA voxel grid; theoretical limits derived internally: 30–60 cm at 16 nodes/1 m spacing, 8.8 cm information-theoretic dense limit | [I] (rf-topological-sensing doc 09 — synthetic derivations, no bench numbers) |
| Method | Year | Metric | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| RF-Pose / RF-Pose3D (MIT, FMCW 5.4–7.2 GHz) | 2018 | Through-wall skeletal pose, ~specialized radar not commodity WiFi | [K] |
| Commodity 2.4 GHz through-wall imaging (arXiv 1903.03895) | 2019 | Coarse imaging through walls with commodity WiFi | [V] (existence) |
| Radio tomographic imaging (RTI) lineage | 2010–2013 | Through-wall tracking via RSS networks, ~0.5–1 m tracking error | [V] (papers) / error figure [K] |
| LeakyBeam (NDSS 2025) | 2025 | Through-wall occupancy at 20 m, passive, commodity | [V] |
| RuView | 2026 | RF tomography module (tomography.rs, ISTA L1 voxel solver) + CIR (ADR-134) exist as code; PABS structure detection: 1,161× static / 9.36× dynamic intruder lift (synthetic) | [I] |
Notably, the 2025–2026 web literature shows through-wall pose (not just presence) on commodity WiFi remains essentially where it was in 2019 — no verified commodity-WiFi through-wall pose benchmark surfaced in our searches. The frontier moved to privacy attacks (BFI) instead.
| Method | Year | Metric | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| BFId (KIT, ACM CCS 2025) | 2025 | ~99.5% (near-100%) re-ID across 197 subjects from beamforming feedback alone, ≥5 s of BFI | [V] (also BFLD survey §4.1) |
| Transformer CSI identification | 2025 | 99.82% on stationary subjects | [V] |
| WhoFi (arXiv 2507.12869) | 2025 | Deep person re-ID via WiFi channel encoding, ~95% rank-1 class results | existence [V]; exact number [K] |
| Wi-Gait | 2023 | 92.9% over 10 subjects, robust to walking cofactors | [V] |
| RuView | 2026 | AETHER contrastive re-ID embeddings (ADR-024) in pose tracker; BFLD: first defensive identity-leak detector (identity_risk_score) — the literature attacks, RuView audits | [I] |
| Method | Year | Metric | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| mmChainPose | 2025 | 27.0 mm MPJPE / 0.8706 OKS on MARS (mmWave point cloud) | [V] |
| ProbRadarM3F (arXiv 2405.05164) | 2024–25 | SOTA AP across joints, probability-map fusion | [V] |
| Seeed MR60BHA2-class 60 GHz FMCW | shipped | Commodity $15 HR/BR/presence module — already in RuView's hardware table | [I] |
mmWave is ~6× better than the best WiFi MPJPE (27 mm vs 160 mm) [V]. The strategic implication: WiFi will not beat mmWave on raw geometry; it wins on ubiquity, cost, through-wall propagation, and standardized waveforms (§2). RuView already hedges with the ESP32-C6 + MR60BHA2 fusion node. [I]
Status (verified): IEEE 802.11bf-2025 is ratified and published (IEEE SA lists the amendment; ratification late 2024 / publication 2025) [V]. It amends MAC/PHY of HE (Wi-Fi 6) and EHT (Wi-Fi 7) plus DMG/EDMG (60 GHz) to support WLAN sensing in 1–7.125 GHz and >45 GHz bands [V]. The Wi-Fi Alliance has Wi-Fi Sensing as an active certification work area built on 802.11bf (presence/proximity, gestures, vital signs) [V]. Market reports claim >47 chipset vendors with 802.11bf-compatible programs as of early 2026 — single weak source, treat as directional [V, low confidence].
What it implies for RuView:
CsiFrame schema is the right abstraction layer to absorb a future bf adapter (rvcsi-adapter-*). [I]Verified 2025–2026 attempts, all young, none dominant:
| Model | Approach | Downstream tasks | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| LWM (Large Wireless Model) | Pretrained on large-scale CSI → general channel embeddings | LoS/NLoS, beats raw features in low-data regimes | [V] |
| LatentWave (arXiv 2606.06373) | JEPA pretraining on wireless spectrograms + CSI | RF classification, 5G NR positioning, beam prediction, LoS/NLoS | [V] |
| WirelessJEPA (arXiv 2601.20190) | Multi-antenna spatio-temporal latent prediction | Cross-task transfer | [V] |
| IQFM | Contrastive SSL on raw I/Q | Modulation classification, beam prediction, RF fingerprinting, few-shot | [V] |
| Multimodal Wireless FMs (arXiv 2511.15162), WMFM (arXiv 2512.23897), SoM (arXiv 2506.07647) | Vision + RF multimodal for 6G ISAC | Sensing-communication integration | [V] |
| DeepSig OmniSIG | Commercial AI-native RF sensing, 500 MHz/GPU spectrum | Signal ID (LTE/5G/Wi-Fi) | [V] |
Critical observation: every verified RF foundation model targets communication-side tasks (beam prediction, LoS/NLoS, modulation, positioning). None of them is a human-sensing foundation model — none pretrains for pose/vitals/identity invariances. ADR-150's measured negative result is the sharpest data point in this space: pose-contrastive pretraining across subjects failed on MM-Fi because the invariance is not in the data (loss never left the ln(B) floor) [I]. The literature has not yet published this failure mode; the field's "GPT for RF sensing" narrative is ahead of its evidence. The defensible foundation-model objective (per ADR-150 §3.5–3.6) is reduce few-shot calibration cost, not zero-shot invariance. [I]
Targets below are bar definitions, not claims. RuView numbers in the "current" column are measured [I]; targets must be proven via the AetherArena witness protocol (ADR-149) before being asserted anywhere.
| Capability | Published SOTA (2026) | RuView measured today | RuView beyond-SOTA target | Key obstacle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pose, in-domain (MM-Fi) | GraphPose-Fi 160.6 mm MPJPE; MultiFormer 72.25% torso-PCK@20 [V] | 81.63% torso-PCK@20 (already > published) [I] | Hold #1 under leakage-free audit + per-joint tables published with witness rows | Protocol fragmentation; reviewers distrust WiFi-pose numbers |
| Pose, cross-subject zero-shot | ~collapse everywhere; PerceptAlign PCK@20 44.2 cross-layout [V] | 11.6% torso zero-shot; 63–65% in-harness official split [I] | Stop chasing it (measured dead end); instead few-shot frontier below | Subject-distribution shift is in the data, not the model (ADR-150 §3.2) |
| Pose, deployment calibration | No published per-room adapter mechanism found | 11 KB LoRA, 100–200 frames → 72.5%; cross-env K=5 → 60.1% [I] | ≤20 frames → ≥70% PCK@20, adapter ≤11 KB, 30 s on-site; publish as the first calibration-service benchmark | Needs diverse-room capture fleet to validate beyond MM-Fi |
| Presence/motion (commodity) | 92.6% across 10 M routers [V] | Synthetic placement recipe 100% coverage N=5 [I] | ≥99% presence with calibrated p95 bounds on $6–15 ESP32 mesh, bench-validated | All placement numbers are synthetic; Tier-2.3 bench validation outstanding |
| Person count | ~90–97% lab, ≤5 people [K] | cog ships uncertainty intervals [I] | Exact count 1–6 people ≥95% with honest intervals, multistatic, real bench | Multi-person CSI superposition; no public multi-occupancy benchmark |
| Vital signs HR | 0.8–1.2 bpm median, single subject, LoS, 1–3 m [V] | No in-repo ECG-validated number — must not be claimed | ≤1.5 bpm MAE vs ECG ground truth, multi-person or through-wall, witness-bundled | R13 physics floor: ~5 dB shortfall at distance; needs chest-centric placement + PABS |
| Vital signs BP | NEGATIVE at WiFi band (matches internal R13) | nvsim quantum path only [I] | First validated quantum-classical fused bedside vitals (ADR-114) | NV-diamond hardware maturity, 2028+ |
| Localization | 0.63 m single-link AI; sub-1 m 802.11az [V] | CRLB machinery, no bench number [I] | ≤30 cm multistatic on ESP32 mesh (internal theory says feasible at N=16) | ESP32 clock sync / phase offset (TDM protocol exists, unproven at this accuracy) |
| Through-wall | Occupancy yes (LeakyBeam); commodity pose: nothing credible [V] | tomography + CIR code, PABS 9.36× lift (synthetic) [I] | First witnessed commodity-WiFi through-wall person localization (not pose) ≤1 m | Wall attenuation eats the R6.1 4.7 dB multi-scatterer budget |
| Identity / re-ID | ~99.5% @ 197 subjects (attack) [V] | AETHER + BFLD defensive auditing (no published competitor) [I] | Ship the first identity-leak risk score with DP budget hook; keep re-ID opt-in only | Calibrating risk score at 802.11ax 4/2-bit quantization (BFLD open Q2) |
| Verification | Nothing comparable published — no WiFi-sensing paper ships deterministic re-verification | ADR-028 witness bundles, SHA-256 proof, 7/7 self-verify, 1,031+ tests [I] | Make witness-grade reproduction the expected standard: every public claim = one-command verification | Community adoption, not technology |
| Foundation encoder | Comms-task FMs only (LWM/JEPA family) [V] | Masked-CSI + coherence head planned; pose-contrastive refuted [I] | First sensing FM whose acceptance metric is calibration-sample reduction (frames-to-72% halved) | SSL must match production CSI pipeline (ADR-149 resampling risk) |
The 2026 bar is bimodal: lab in-domain numbers are saturated (PCK@50 > 95%, HR < 1 bpm) and deployment numbers are collapsed (cross-layout PCK@20 ≈ 44, zero-shot cross-subject ≈ 11%). 802.11bf-2025 commoditizes raw sensing; foundation models commoditize comms-side embeddings. "Beyond SOTA" for RuView is therefore not a leaderboard delta — it is owning the three layers the field hasn't built: (a) witnessed, deterministic, leakage-audited evaluation; (b) the few-shot calibration service (11 KB adapters) as the deployment answer the zero-shot literature lacks; (c) the privacy/integrity layer (BFLD + coherence gate) that 802.11bf-era regulation will demand. Each row in §4's target table is gated on the AetherArena witness protocol — a target becomes a claim only when it ships with a one-command reproduction.
Pose: GraphPose-Fi · PerceptAlign / cross-layout · CSDS · Person-in-WiFi 3D · DensePose From WiFi · MetaFi++ · WiFlow Vitals: PhaseBeat · Non-contact HR (Sensors 24:2111) · PulseFi · mmWave vitals dataset (Sci Data) Localization: FTM survey 802.11mc/az/bk · Decimeter single-link · SelfLoc 802.11az 802.11bf: IEEE SA 802.11bf-2025 · TGbf · NIST overview · Wi-Fi Alliance work areas · ISAC survey (10M-router 92.6%) Identity: BFId / KIT CCS 2025 coverage · WhoFi · Wi-Gait · LeakyBeam NDSS 2025 Through-wall: RTI through-wall · Commodity 2.4 GHz imaging · Multi-room presence Foundation models: LatentWave · WirelessJEPA · Multimodal Wireless FMs · WMFM · SoM · RF-native AI / LWM, IQFM, OmniSIG mmWave: mmChainPose · ProbRadarM3F
Internal [I] sources: ADR-150 (§1, §3.2–3.6), ADR-147, ADR-028, ADR-113/114, issue #876, docs/research/sota-2026-05-22/00-summary.md, docs/research/BFLD/01-sota-survey.md, docs/research/rf-topological-sensing/.