  Detection of nocturnal seizures in epilepsy patients is essential, both for
the quick management of the seizure complications, and for the assessment of
the ongoing seizure treatment. Traditional seizure detection products (e.g.,
wearables), however, are either very costly, uncomfortable, or unreliable. In
this paper, we then propose to utilize everyday WiFi signals for robust, fast,
and non-invasive detection of nocturnal seizures. We first present a new and
rigorous mathematical characterization for the spectral content/bandwidth of
the WiFi signal, measured on a WiFi device placed near a sleeping patient,
during different kinds of sleep motions: seizures, normal movements (e.g.
posture adjustments), and breathing. Based on this mathematical modeling, we
propose a novel pipeline for processing the received WiFi signals to robustly
detect all nocturnal non-breathing movements, and then classify them into
normal body movements or seizures. In order to validate this, we carry out
extensive experiments in 7 different typical bedroom locations, where a set of
20 actors simulate the state of having seizures (total of 260 instances), as
well as normal sleep movements (total of 410 instances). Our proposed system
detects 93.85% of the seizures with a mean response time of only 5.69 seconds
since the onset of the seizure. Moreover, our proposed system achieves a
probability of false alarm of only 0.0097, when classifying normal sleep
movements. Overall, our new mathematical modeling and experimental results show
the great potential the ubiquitous WiFi signals have for detecting nocturnal
seizures, which can provide better support for epilepsy patients and their
caregivers.
