Signals sent and received from cell phone microphones and speakers could help warn people when they have been near someone who has contracted COVID-19, researchers say.
In a new paper, researchers described a system that would generate random, anonymous IDs for each phone, automatically send ultrasonic signals between microphones and speakers of phones within a certain radius, and use the information exchanged through this acoustic channel for contact tracing.
If a person tested positive for COVID-19, he or she would update his or her anonymous IDs and the timestamp when the IDs were generated in the past two weeks to a central database managed by a trusted health care authority. Each individual in the system will pull the positive patient's IDs and compare locally to check whether he or she has had any contact with the patient.
Tech companies have already proposed using a phone's Bluetooth capability—which allows cell phones to "talk" to other nearby devices such as phones, smartwatches, and speakers—to build such a network. But Bluetooth, said Zhiqiang Lin, a co-author of the paper and an associate professor of computer science and engineering, could lead to a high number of false-positive close contacts.
"Bluetooth has a problem of traveling too far," Lin said. "Bluetooth signals can travel through walls and reach further than we would want. And with COVID, we want to find just those people with whom you have been in direct close contact—within that 6-foot radius, for example."
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