Person Monitoring with Bluetooth Tracking - Mobility Data - page 289

Figure 14.1 Components of a Bluetooth scanner for tracking purposes: computational unit
(1), power source (2), USB cable (3), class 2 Bluetooth sensor (4), class 1 Bluetooth sensor
(5), and different types of external antennas (6, 7).
a wide variety of environments and for a sufficiently large sample size in order
to make representative statements for the entire population.
14.2 How Bluetooth Offers an Alternative Solution
In response to these issues regarding data collection and given the ubiquity of
Bluetooth-enabled devices such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants
(PDAs) carried around by their owners, Bluetooth technology has increasingly
been suggested as a simple and low-cost alternative for the reconstruction of
spatio-temporal behavior. Section 14.5 outlines some of the research that has
already used Bluetooth as a tracking technology. “Discoverable” devices - and
by extension their owners - can be traced by means of a unique media access
control (MAC) address that is broadcasted in the Bluetooth discovery process.
Because this MAC address cannot be directly linked to any personal (or other
sensitive) information, individuals remain anonymous, avoiding potential pri-
vacy infringements.
14.2.1 Bluetooth Tracking Methodology
Bluetooth scanners - depicted in Figure 14.1 - can sense the presence of discov-
erable Bluetooth devices in their vicinity by continuously inquiring for nearby
devices with a Bluetooth sensor and logging the broadcast messages sent by