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1. FinderX: A Bluetooth Beacon Based System for Designing Sustainable Green Smart Cities

   https://doi.org/10.1109/MCE.2021.3076290  

   Hasan, Raiful ; Hasan, Ragib ( April 2021 , IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine)

   null (Ed.)

   Cities offer extensive facilities to enrich the quality of life by utilizing smart devices and sensors. The Internet of Things and smart sensors connect various city services with the inhabitants. The services should be convenient and accessible to all, especially pedestrians and people with visual impairment. However, the lack of information about service locations often limits their availability and use. To this end, we developed FinderX, a Bluetooth beacon-based system to search for the nearest services and amenities. FinderX identifies the locations of nearby amenities in real-time using the signal from attached beacons. The system does not require Internet or other communication infrastructure and can function where the GPS signal is inaccessible. To demonstrate the feasibility of FinderX, we set up a testbed and evaluated the system in an urban environment. We show that FinderX has adequate usability and feasibility and reduces the time to find the amenities by 18.98\% on average. We also demonstrate that Bluetooth beacons have lower horizontal error compared to GPS in micro-positioning (where semi-indoor or surrounding infrastructure limits signal accessibility), which motivates the use of Bluetooth beacons for such applications. 

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2. Emulation of epidemics via Bluetooth-based virtual safe virus spread: Experimental setup, software, and data

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000142  

   Asanjarani, Azam ; Shausan, Aminath ; Chew, Keng ; Graham, Thomas ; Henderson, Shane G. ; Jansen, Hermanus M. ; Short, Kirsty R. ; Taylor, Peter G. ; Vuorinen, Aapeli ; Yadav, Yuvraj ; et al ( December 2022 , PLOS Digital Health)

   Lai, Yuan (Ed.)

   We describe an experimental setup and a currently running experiment for evaluating how physical interactions over time and between individuals affect the spread of epidemics. Our experiment involves the voluntary use of the Safe Blues Android app by participants at The University of Auckland (UoA) City Campus in New Zealand. The app spreads multiple virtual safe virus strands via Bluetooth depending on the physical proximity of the subjects. The evolution of the virtual epidemics is recorded as they spread through the population. The data is presented as a real-time (and historical) dashboard. A simulation model is applied to calibrate strand parameters. Participants’ locations are not recorded, but participants are rewarded based on the duration of participation within a geofenced area, and aggregate participation numbers serve as part of the data. The 2021 experimental data is available as an open-source anonymized dataset, and once the experiment is complete, the remaining data will be made available. This paper outlines the experimental setup, software, subject-recruitment practices, ethical considerations, and dataset description. The paper also highlights current experimental results in view of the lockdown that started in New Zealand at 23:59 on August 17, 2021. The experiment was initially planned in the New Zealand environment, expected to be free of COVID and lockdowns after 2020. However, a COVID Delta strain lockdown shuffled the cards and the experiment is currently extended into 2022. 

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3. Distracted Driving Detection Utilizing Wearable-based Bluetooth

   https://doi.org/10.1109/MASS56207.2022.00074  

   Mewborne, Travis ; Lee, Youngone ; Tan, Sheng ; Yang, Jie ( October 2022 , 19th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems)
4. InSight: A Bluetooth Beacon-based Ad-hoc Emergency Alert System for Smart Cities

   https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC49032.2021.9369621  

   Hasan, Raiful ; Hasan, Ragib ; Islam, Tanveer ( January 2021 , 2021 IEEE 18th Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC),)

   null (Ed.)

   The purpose of alerts and warnings is to provide necessary information to the public that will lead to their safety in emergencies. The nation’s alerting capabilities need to evolve and progress with the extensive use of smartphones, and newer technologies become available, especially to be more precisely targeted to sub-populations at risk. Historically, this has been a challenge as the delivery of alerts and warning messages to the public is primarily through broadcast media and signs. However, deploying such signs takes time and may not be visible to people imminent of natural hazards. Especially for road closing, marking hazards, emergency evacuation, etc., it would be beneficial to have an easy-to-deploy and automated alert/warning system that requires no line of sight. To this end, we have developed Insight – a Bluetooth beacon-based system that uses a smartphone application to sense signals from beacons marking hazard zones. The system does not require any Internet or communication infrastructure and therefore, it is resilient to breakdowns in communications during disasters. To demonstrate the feasibility of Insight, we conducted a study in an urban university campus location. The system demonstrated adequate usability and feasibility. 

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5. BeaCloud: A Generic Architecture for Sustainable Smart City using Bluetooth Beacons

   https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCC-SmartCity-DSS50907.2020.00149  

   Hasan, Raiful ; Hasan, Ragib ( December 2020 , IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC))

   null (Ed.)

   In recent years, Bluetooth beacons have been widely used in numerous application domains, including smart cities, assistive technologies, and intelligent transportation management. Researchers or developers associated with these domains frequently require diverse systems to implement or test their prototype related innovations. They need to deploy beacons for the specific environment every time; such customized systems typically cannot often be reused. Hence, the cost of implementation increases, and multiple systems generate redundant data. In this paper, we propose BeaCloud - an architecture which provides a common platform of multiple beacon-based systems. BeaCloud enables inter-system communication and allows easy and secure access to data for the system administrators. The proposed architecture presents a cost-effective model that offers reduced cost and hardware. Also, BeaCloud reduces the data redundancy by up to 40%. To demonstrate the feasibility of BeaCloud, we implemented a testbed of three testing sites and evaluated the system's performance. 

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