skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Using RSSI to Form Path in an Indoor Space
Generating paths of a mobile device in indoor space by sensing its Bluetooth RSSI value is challenging but has real-world applications. Although Bluetooth RSSI suffers from different factors that limit its usability, this research shows that it can still be used to detect mobility and, over a duration of time, can be used to form paths. This poster presents algorithms that can create a path of a moving mobile device by sensing its RSSI values over time and then presents early results of the algorithm's effectiveness while tracking health practitioners' movement within a community care clinic setting.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2131100
PAR ID:
10354388
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2022 International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 2
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. In an indoor space, determining a person's mobility patterns has research significance and applicability in real-world scenarios. When mobility patterns are determined, layout optimization can be implemented in indoor spaces to improve efficiency. This research aimed to determine a person's path using Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) data collected from Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices. Mobile app-based mobility detection using Bluetooth RSSI has the advantage of low cost and easy implementation. The research methodology involves developing a Bluetooth RSSI mobility application system to determine the path of a moving mobile device using a vectorized algorithm. The paper presents challenges in creating such a software system, its architecture, the data collection and analysis process, and the results of mobility detection. This research shows that Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices and Bluetooth RSSI data can be used to determine the path in an indoor space with workable accuracy. 
    more » « less
  2. While there are numerous causes of waste in the healthcare system, some of this waste is associated with inefficiency. Among the proposed solutions to address inefficiency is clinic layout optimization. Such optimization depends on how operating resources and instruments are placed in the clinic, in what order they are accessed to attain a particular task, and the mobility of clinicians between different clinic rooms to accomplish different clinic tasks. Traditionally, such optimization research involves manual monitoring by human proctors, which is time consuming, erroneous, unproductive, and subjective. If mobility patterns in an indoor space can be determined automatically in real time, layout and operation-related optimization decisions based on these patterns can be implemented accurately and continuously in a timely fashion. This paper explores this application domain where precise localization is not required; however, the determination of mobility is essential on a real-time basis. Given that, this research explores how only mobile devices and their built-in Bluetooth received signal strength indicator (RSSI) can be used to determine such mobility. With a collection of stationary mobile devices, with their computational and networking capabilities and lack of energy requirements, the mobility of moving mobile devices was determined. The research methodology involves developing two new algorithms that use raw RSSI data to create visualizations of movements across different operational units identified by stationary nodes. Compared with similar approaches, this research showcases that the method presented in this paper is viable and can produce mobility patterns in indoor spaces that can be utilized further for data analysis and visualization. 
    more » « less
  3. Mobility tracking of IoT devices in smart city infrastructures such as smart buildings, hospitals, shopping centers, warehouses, smart streets, and outdoor spaces has many applications. Since Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is available in almost every IoT device in the market nowadays, a key to localizing and tracking IoT devices is to develop an accurate ranging technique for BLE-enabled IoT devices. This is, however, a challenging feat as billions of these devices are already in use, and for pragmatic reasons, we cannot propose to modify the IoT device (a BLE peripheral) itself. Furthermore, unlike WiFi ranging - where the channel state information (CSI) is readily available and the bandwidth can be increased by stitching 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands together to achieve a high-precision ranging, an unmodified BLE peripheral provides us with only the RSSI information over a very limited bandwidth. Accurately ranging a BLE device is therefore far more challenging than other wireless standards. In this paper, we exploit characteristics of BLE protocol (e.g. frequency hopping and empty control packet transmissions) and propose a technique to directly estimate the range of a BLE peripheral from a BLE access point by multipath profiling. We discuss the theoretical foundation and conduct experiments to show that the technique achieves a 2.44m absolute range estimation error on average. 
    more » « less
  4. A potentiostat is an analytical device and a crucial component in electrochemical instruments used for studying chemical reaction mechanisms, with potential applications in early diagnosis of disease or critical health conditions. Conventional potentiostats are typically benchtop devices designed for laboratory use, whereas a wearable potentiostat can be interfaced with biochemical sensors for disease diagnostics at home. This work presents a low-power potentiostat designed to connect with a sensor array consisting of eight to ten working electrodes. The potentiostat is capable of running Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and Cyclic Voltammetry. The system is powered by lithium-ion batteries and uses Bluetooth for data transmission to the user. A single ARM M4 microcontroller, integrated with a Bluetooth low-energy radio module, controls the entire system. The accuracy, reliability, and power efficiency of the potentiostat were evaluated and compared against existing commercial benchtop potentiostats. Additionally, we have outlined future steps to enhance circuit miniaturization and power efficiency, aiming to develop fully integrated wearable sensing devices comparable in size to a wristwatch. 
    more » « less
  5. Modern mobile users commonly use multiple heterogeneous mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, and wearables. Enabling these devices to seamlessly share their computational, network, and sensing resources has great potential benefit. Sharing resources across collocated mobile devices creates mobile device clouds (MDCs), commonly used to optimize application performance and to enable novel applications. However, enabling heterogeneous mobile devices to share their resources presents a number of difficulties, including the need to coordinate and steer the execution of devices with dissimilar network interfaces, application programming models, and system architectures. In this paper, we describe a solution that systematically empowers heterogeneous mobile devices to seamlessly, reliably, and efficiently share their resources. We present a programming model and runtime support for heterogeneous mobile device-to-device resource sharing. Our solution comprises a declarative domain-specific language for device-to-device cooperation, supported by a powerful runtime infrastructure. we evaluated our solution by conducting a controlled user study and running performance/energy efficiency benchmarks. The evaluation results indicate that our solution can become a practical tool for enhancing the capabilities of modern mobile applications by leveraging the resources of nearby mobile devices. 
    more » « less