Yadong Li

I am a 1st year Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), advised by Prof. Akshay Gadre. Previously, my research journey began at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), working with Prof. Qibin Sun and Prof. Yan Chen.

My research focuses on Millimeter-wave Imaging and Wireless Sensing using signal processing, machine learning, and system design, including:

developing advanced 3D high-resolution imaging systems that enable non-line-of-sight perception of the physical world through low-cost, mobile mmWave devices: IFNet (TMC’24), PSF-SAR (CommsEng’24), mmHide (TIFS’25), DREAM-PCD (TIP’24).
designing intelligent, human-centric sensing systems that leverage wireless signals for health monitoring, motion tracking, and interactive applications: UltraPoser (UIST’25), RF-Mamba (ICLR’25), RF-HRV (NatureComms’24), RLoc (UbiComp’24).

Motivated by the lack of benchmarks in wireless AI, my co-authors and I have released datasets and code for diverse signals and applications, which have been accessed by researchers from over 100 institutions across 12 countries:

IFNet: Handheld mmWave SAR imaging dataset (10400 samples from 26 objects and 200 handheld scanning trajectories).
MCD-Gesture: Cross-domain mmWave gesture dataset (24050 instances from 25 users, 6 rooms, and 5 locations).
H-WILD: Human-held device WiFi localization dataset (120,000 frames from 10 volunteers across 4 rooms).
RadarEyes: Multi-modal point cloud dataset (1,000,000 frames of radar and LiDAR data from 300 rooms).

News

Jul 25, 2025	UltraPoser has been accepted to ACM UIST. The code and dataset will be released soon. Huge thanks to all the amazing collaborating advisors and students!
Dec 30, 2024	Code for all my first-authored papers has been released! Check out my github page for more information.
Nov 20, 2024	RF-HRV has been accepted by Nature Communications. Press Coverage: MIT Technology Review, China News (中国新闻网), China Science Daily (中国科学报), China National Radio News (央广网), Guangming Daily (光明日报).
Oct 30, 2024	IFNet has been accepted by IEEE TMC. Code and dataset of IFNet will be available soon.
Sep 27, 2024	We have released the code of DI-Gesture (TMC’22) and PSF handheld SAR imaging (CommsEng’24).
Jul 01, 2024	Our released MCD-Gesture dataset has been accessed by over 60 institutions across 12 countries.

Selected Publications

UIST’25

UltraPoser: Pushing the Limits of IMU-based Full-Body Pose Estimation with Ultrasound Sensing on Consumer Wearables

Yadong Li^*, Shuning Wang^*, Yongjian Fu, Justin Chen, Xingyu Chen, Ju Ren, Xinyu Zhang, Akshay Gadre, and Ke Sun

In ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 2025

Bib HTML Video Code Dataset

@inproceedings{ultraposer,
  author = {Li, Yadong and Wang, Shuning and Fu, Yongjian and Chen, Justin and Chen, Xingyu and Ren, Ju and <br> Zhang, Xinyu and Gadre, Akshay and Sun, Ke},
  title = {UltraPoser: Pushing the Limits of IMU-based Full-Body Pose Estimation with Ultrasound Sensing on Consumer Wearables},
  year = {2025},
  booktitle = {ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology},
}

IEEE TIFS’25

Attacking mmWave Imaging with Neural Meta-Material Rendering

Ruixu Geng, Dongheng Zhang, Yadong Li, Zhi Wu, Jiamu Li, Qi Chen, Yang Hu, and Yan Chen

IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2025

Bib HTML

@article{geng2025mmattack,
  author = {Geng, Ruixu and Zhang, Dongheng and Li, Yadong and Wu, Zhi and Li, Jiamu and Chen, Qi and Hu, Yang and Chen, Yan},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security},
  title = {Attacking mmWave Imaging with Neural Meta-Material Rendering},
  year = {2025},
  volume = {},
  number = {},
}

ICLR’25

RFMamba: Frequency-Aware State Space Model for RF-Based Human-Centric Perception

Rui Zhang, Ruixu Geng, Yadong Li, Ruiyuan Song, Hanqin Gong, Dongheng Zhang, Yang Hu, and Yan Chen

In International Conference on Learning Representations, 2025

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{zhang2025rfmamba,
  title = {RFMamba: Frequency-Aware State Space Model for RF-Based Human-Centric Perception},
  author = {Zhang, Rui and Geng, Ruixu and Li, Yadong and Song, Ruiyuan and Gong, Hanqin and Zhang, Dongheng and Hu, Yang and Chen, Yan},
  year = {2025},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Learning Representations},
}

NatCommun’24

Monitoring Long-term Cardiac Activity with Contactless Radio Frequency Signals

Bin-Bin Zhang, Dongheng Zhang, Yadong Li, Zhi Lu, Jinbo Chen, Haoyu Wang, Fang Zhou, Yu Pu, Yang Hu, Likun Ma, Qibin Sun, and Yan Chen

Nature Communications, 2024 (Impact Factor: 14.7)

Bib HTML Code

@article{zhang2024monitoring,
  title = {Monitoring Long-term Cardiac Activity with Contactless Radio Frequency Signals},
  author = {Zhang, Bin-Bin and Zhang, Dongheng and Li, Yadong and Lu, Zhi and Chen, Jinbo and Wang, Haoyu and Zhou, Fang and Pu, Yu and Hu, Yang and Ma, Likun and Sun, Qibin and Chen, Yan},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  year = {2024},
  impact_factor = {14.7},
}

IEEE TMC’24

IFNet: Deep Imaging and Focusing for Handheld SAR with Millimeter-wave Signals

Yadong Li, Dongheng Zhang, Ruixu Geng, Jincheng Wu, Yang Hu, Qibin Sun, and Yan Chen

IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 2024

Bib HTML Code Dataset

@article{li2024ifnet,
  title = {IFNet: Deep Imaging and Focusing for Handheld SAR with Millimeter-wave Signals},
  author = {Li, Yadong and Zhang, Dongheng and Geng, Ruixu and Wu, Jincheng and Hu, Yang and Sun, Qibin and Chen, Yan},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing},
  year = {2024},
}

CommsEng’24

A High-resolution Handheld millimeter-wave Imaging System with Phase Error Estimation and Compensation

Yadong Li, Dongheng Zhang, Ruixu Geng, Zhi Lu, Zhi Wu, Yang Hu, Qibin Sun, and Yan Chen

Communications Engineering, 2024 (Top 15% downloaded papers of 2024)

Bib HTML Code

@article{li2024high,
  title = {A High-resolution Handheld millimeter-wave Imaging System with Phase Error Estimation and Compensation},
  author = {Li, Yadong and Zhang, Dongheng and Geng, Ruixu and Lu, Zhi and Wu, Zhi and Hu, Yang and Sun, Qibin and Chen, Yan},
  journal = {Communications Engineering},
  volume = {3},
  number = {1},
  pages = {4},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {Nature Publishing Group UK London},
  highlight = {Top 15% downloaded papers of 2024},
}

IEEE TIP’24

DREAM-PCD: Deep Reconstruction and Enhancement of mmWave Radar Pointcloud

Ruixu Geng, Yadong Li, Dongheng Zhang, Jincheng Wu, Yating Gao, Yang Hu, and Yan Chen

IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2024

Bib HTML Dataset

@article{geng2024dream,
  title = {DREAM-PCD: Deep Reconstruction and Enhancement of mmWave Radar Pointcloud},
  author = {Geng, Ruixu and Li, Yadong and Zhang, Dongheng and Wu, Jincheng and Gao, Yating and Hu, Yang and Chen, Yan},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Image Processing},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

IJCAI’24

Learning-Based Tracking-before-Detect for RF-Based Unconstrained Indoor Human Tracking

Zhi Wu, Dongheng Zhang, Zixin Shang, Yuqin Yuan, Hanqin Gong, Binquan Wang, Zhi Lu, Yadong Li, Yang Hu, Qibin Sun, and Yan Chen

In International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, 2024

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{wu2024learning,
  title = {Learning-Based Tracking-before-Detect for RF-Based Unconstrained Indoor Human Tracking},
  author = {Wu, Zhi and Zhang, Dongheng and Shang, Zixin and Yuan, Yuqin and Gong, Hanqin and Wang, Binquan and Lu, Zhi and Li, Yadong and Hu, Yang and Sun, Qibin and Chen, Yan},
  booktitle = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence},
  year = {2024},
}

UbiComp’24

Rloc: Towards Robust Indoor Localization by Quantifying Uncertainty

Tianyu Zhang, Dongheng Zhang, Guanzhong Wang, Yadong Li, Yang Hu, Qibin Sun, and Yan Chen

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2024

Bib HTML Dataset

@article{zhang2024rloc,
  title = {Rloc: Towards Robust Indoor Localization by Quantifying Uncertainty},
  author = {Zhang, Tianyu and Zhang, Dongheng and Wang, Guanzhong and Li, Yadong and Hu, Yang and Sun, Qibin and Chen, Yan},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies},
  volume = {7},
  number = {4},
  pages = {1--28},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {ACM New York, NY, USA},
}

IEEE TMC’22

Towards Domain-independent and Real-time Gesture Recognition using mmWave Signal

Yadong Li, Dongheng Zhang, Jinbo Chen, Jinwei Wan, Dong Zhang, Yang Hu, Qibin Sun, and Yan Chen

IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 2022

Bib HTML Code Dataset

@article{li2022towards,
  title = {Towards Domain-independent and Real-time Gesture Recognition using mmWave Signal},
  author = {Li, Yadong and Zhang, Dongheng and Chen, Jinbo and Wan, Jinwei and Zhang, Dong and Hu, Yang and Sun, Qibin and Chen, Yan},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing},
  volume = {22},
  number = {12},
  pages = {7355--7369},
  year = {2022},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}