Less is More: The Dilution Effect in Multi-Link Wireless Sensing

Abstract: Wireless sensing approaches promise to transform smart infrastructures into privacy-preserving motion detectors, yet commercial adoption remains limited. A common assumption may explain this gap: that denser sensor deployments yield better accuracy. We tested this assumption with a 12-day naturalistic study using a 9-node ESP32-C3 mesh (72 sensing links) in a residential environment. Our results show that a single well-placed link outperformed the full 72-link mesh (AUC 0.541 vs. 0.489, Cohen's $d$=0.86). Even a random link selection matched optimized selection ($p$=0.35). The benefit comes from avoiding multi-link fusion, not from choosing the right link. We attribute this to a "dilution effect": links whose Fresnel zones miss activity regions contribute noise that overwhelms signal from informative links. In our deployment, strategic link placement mattered 2.7$\times$ more than classifier choice. We release 312 hours of labeled CSI data, firmware, and analysis code to enable validation across diverse environments.