BLUETOOTH NAVIGATION SYSTEM USING

WI-FI ACCESS POINTS

Rohit Agrawal1 and Ashesh Vasalya2
1
School of Electronics Engineering, VIT University, Vellore
[email protected]
2
School of Electrical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore
[email protected]

ABSTRACT
There have been various navigation and tracking systems being developed with the help of technologies
like GPS, GSM, Bluetooth, IR, Wi-Fi and Radar. Outdoor positioning systems have been deployed quite
successfully using GPS but positioning systems for indoor environments still do not have widespread
deployment due to various reasons. Most of these use only a single technology for positioning but using
more than one in cooperation with each other is always advantageous for obtaining greater accuracy.
Particularly, the ones which use Bluetooth are better since they would enhance the scalability of such a
system because of the fact that this technology is in use by the common people so it would always be easy
to track them. Moreover it would also reduce the hardware installation cost to some extent. The system
that has been introduced here uses Bluetooth primarily for positioning and tracking in combination with
Wi-Fi access points. The reason that makes the commercial application of such a system easier and
cheaper is that most of the localized areas today like college campus, offices are being provided with
internet connectivity using these access points.

KEYWORDS
Tracking, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Positioning

1. INTRODUCTION
With the large scale expansion of campuses or premises of colleges, hospitals, corporate offices,
hotels and all sorts of commercial and non-commercial buildings, precise positioning has gained
a lot of importance not only to save time but also to get rapid access to everybody everywhere.
There are a lot of organizations which have some restricted areas which they would like to make
accessible to only a few people, this facility can also be provided by such tracking systems.
Protecting secured networks from intrusion or maintaining a record of all the movements of the
network assets are some other advantages of these systems.
Although such tracking systems have such varied applications but the most commercially viable
ones in the present scenario are those which make use of the existing wireless infrastructure so
as to reduce the equipment and installation cost considerably. Wi-Fi tracking seems to be a
plausible solution and significant work has been done in this regard but there are a lot of
drawbacks associated with them.
The system introduced in this paper is based on two most popular wireless technologies namely
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The sole motive of using Bluetooth is that it is widely available in the
mobile phones now days and is designed for low power consumption compared to Wi-Fi.
Moreover, we make use of Bluetooth – Wi-Fi Gateways which are integrated nodes and can
communicate with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled devices and finally, we have Wi-Fi access
points which are already a part of the organization’s infrastructure to provide internet
connectivity.
The two concerned wireless technologies are being discussed in brief next.
1.1 Bluetooth

Bluetooth is an open wireless technology initially considered for replacement to the RS232
serial cables, now finds varied applications in consumer as well as industrial devices and
practises [13]. It is based on frequency-hopping spread spectrum and uses a master-slave
structure for establishing connection. One master can connect to seven slaves at a time forming
a piconet network.
The functionality of a Bluetooth device is defined on the basis of the Bluetooth profiles, it has
implemented. There are lot of such profiles defined, some of them are Advanced Audio
Distribution Profile (A2DP) for streaming stereo audio quality from a media source to a sink,
Human Interface Device Profile (HID) which defines the protocols, procedures and features to
be used by Bluetooth HID such as keyboards, pointing devices, gaming devices and remote
monitoring devices, Video Distribution Profile (VDP) which defines how a Bluetooth enabled
device streams video over Bluetooth wireless technology etc .

1.2 Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is wireless technology based on the IEEE 802.11 standards [14] and is synonymous with
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) since it is seen as a replacement to the cabling required
in early Local Area Networks.
Its major application is to provide high speed internet connectivity to the Wi-Fi enabled devices
while being in range of wireless network connected to the internet. This kind of network is
implemented with the help of access points (hot spots) and routers. Wi-Fi also uses the same
radio frequencies as that of Bluetooth but requires more power for operation and thereby
provides higher bit rates and better range of communication.

The rest of the paper is divided into various sections. Section 2 describes the related work done
before which is important to understand the relevance of the proposed solution. System
components have then been explained in Section 3 prior to the description of the system
implementation in Section 4.

2. RELATED WORK
The most widely used technology for this application is definitely Global Positioning
System(GPS) which is a world-wide satellite based communication system [1]. However, GPS
cannot be used indoors because a GPS receiver usually fails if line of sight visibility to the
satellites is lost. Assisted GPS may work indoors but it has its own limitations with respect to
network assistance. Being global in nature, GPS gives the latitude and longitude details of a
GPS receiver but the kind of tracking that we are talking about is in a localized area comprising
of both indoor and outdoor locations. Systems relying on cellular networks [2] have to be
owned and administered by the service provider and not the organization and may need
subscription fee as well.
The systems that completely depend on Wi-Fi consider either laptops or mobile phones as their
mobile nodes to track down the owners of these devices. However, using laptops for this
purpose may give incorrect results since a person is not carrying his laptop everywhere he goes
and they might not even be switched ON every time. At the same time, using mobile phones for
tracking also does not seem plausible since Wi-Fi function is available only in expensive high
end smart phones. A mere connection of a person with an access point can help us to locate him
by finding out the location of the access point on the basis of its MAC ID but this would be in a
range of around 30 meters (the range of a normal Wi-Fi access point). So, most of these systems
are based on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) [2] [10] and Signature Matching [3] or
Fingerprinting [4]. The former are based on propagation models that relate the signal strength
directly to the distance from the Wi-Fi access point (AP) using, for example the Friss formula
[5] and can work for stagnant or slow moving assets. When the mobile devices are moving fast,
the signals tend to change rapidly and sometimes, obstacles will also affect the signal values
making the distance prediction either difficult or inaccurate. In the latter ones, a database of
different signal strengths for different locations (called signatures) is created in the server and
the person is positioned by comparing them with the current signal strength. Any change in the
arrangement of obstacles calls for retraining [3]. There might even be different signal strength
values for different types of devices (laptop or mobile) kept at same distance from access point.
So these systems require bulky databases, complex processing or training in the servers to
determine the correct position. Above were some disadvantages of the systems relying only on
Wi-Fi for tracking which make them inefficient. There were some systems developed based on
Bluetooth as well. One such system was established at the Aalborg Zoo where Bluetooth access
points were installed throughout [6]. At the entrance, parents rent BlueTags BodyTag for their
children and register the required information along with contact details. The parents make
enquiry about their children through an SMS code and get response with the help of the tracking
software. One major drawback of such a system was that apart from the installation cost of the
access points, the cost of the bluetags also was to be borne. This also put a constraint that only a
limited no. of children could be tracked if the no. tags were limited. However in our system, the
Bluetooth enabled mobile phones act as the Bluetooth nodes. Only the installation of a
minimum no. of Bluetooth access points will be needed which will work in conjunction with the
Wi-Fi access points that are already existent today in the campuses to provide internet
connectivity. The system illustrated in [15] has enhanced BT positioning accuracy upto 1.5
meters but only with modifications in the core stack which may not be possible with the BT
enabled mobile phones of users.
There were a few systems depending on two technologies simultaneously on Wi-Fi and Zigbee
[7] but Zigbee is not a common consumer technology. In [8], fusion based system on Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth is explained which performs better positioning than system relying only on Wi-Fi but
here there did not exist an internetwork between the two, it tried to fuse separately obtained
results.

3. SYSTEM COMPONENTS
3.1. Bluetooth enabled mobile phone
All the persons in the network own a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone through which they
connect to the network, which they use to make a request to track others and also for themselves
to be located by others.

3.2. Bluetooth (BT) Access Points

A BT Class 3 device with a range of around 10 meters may also be called as reader node is a
Bluetooth transceiver present for an immediate connection to the mobile phone. These access
points are needed to incorporate the core Bluetooth protocols (mandatorily present in all BT
devices) like Link Management Protocol (LMP), Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol
(L2CAP) and Service Discovery Protocol (SDP). Additionally, there is need of Radio Frequency
Communications (RFCOMM) protocol which provides for binary data transport by creating a
virtual serial data link.

3.3. Gateway Nodes

These are integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi nodes which act as a gateway to connect the bluetooth
network to the Wi-Fi network. Both these wireless technologies operate in the 2.4 GHz radio
frequency range allowing for the option of a shared antenna system which has been successfully
incorporated in BCM4325 chip featuring Broadcom's InConcert technology, which consists of
sophisticated software algorithms and hardware mechanisms that enable collaborative co-
existence between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and thereby paving way for entirely new network
applications.

3.4. Wi-Fi Access Points

They allow wireless devices to connect to a wired network like that of an organization’s Local
Area Network to provide access to the shared information and also internet connectivity. In our
system, they acquire tracking information from other devices and sent it to the server and vice
versa.

3.5. Server
The Server in our system apart from performing various network functions also stores
information of the network’s assets i.e. their bluetooth addresses or device names. Moreover it
also contains a list of different BT APs with their address and corresponding physical location
in the form of a look up table shown in Table 1.

4. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
With the development of wide variety of applications for the operating systems of mobile
devices and their easy availability for free, the applications of mobile phones has also increased
manifold. Several applications [9] [11] (mostly based on Java platform) have also been
developed for the purpose of tracking. As soon as a person belonging to that organisation enters
inside the premises, he can connect to the BT network via reader nodes (BT Access Points).
When he wants to know the position of another person, he makes use of such a tracking
application provided in all the mobile phones. He either sends the name of the person or the
bluetooth device address (48 bit unique BT id) to the nearby reader node via bluetooth. This
information hops between different reader nodes to finally reach the Wi-Fi AP through the
Gateway node. Fig. 1 illustrates the network of these access points.
Snippets of structure definitions of the code have been mentioned with their description.
Struct mobinfo
{
Long bsid;
String name;
String another_info;
}

The above structure contains the information of the person to be tracked wherein the Bluetooth
id is enough to identify the person uniquely but supporting information like name and
another_info are sent to be sure. The reader node captures this information from the mobile
device, its software adds the originator’s static id (to get back to the originator with the tracking
information) and sends it to the nearby reader node with the help of RFCOMM protocol. The
revised structure, after the data has been modified by the reader node looks like this:

Struct modified_mobinfo
{
Long bsid;
String name;
String another_info;
Static int originator_id;
}
This updated information travels node by node via bluetooth to reach the gateway node
which is present near the Wi-Fi access point. Since this node is integrated with both Wi-
Fi and Bluetooth, it communicates the information to the Wi-Fi AP and is then
transferred to the organization’s local area network to the server through an ethernet
connection. Fig. 2 shows the complete system layout to illustrate the transfer of
information between different network components.
Apart from this tracking information, the server also handles a lot of other data as well
so we need packet extractor application to extract the packet related to the tracking
information at the server end for further processing. The server now broadcasts this
information to all the access points then to all the reader nodes to locate the person’s
Bluetooth device. All the reader nodes now try to find this device by making an attempt
to establish a connection with the known BT ID or the device name. As soon as a
connection is made to the required person, the particular reader node that made the
connection sends its ID to the server. The server refers to the look up table to obtain the
physical location of the access point and gives this information to the originator who
made the tracking request and also update the information in case the tracked person is
in motion by identifying current connection with the reader node. In this way,
positioning can be achieved within a radius of 10 meters.

4.1. Figures and Tables

Table 1. Lookup Table for BT Access Points.

S.No. Bluetooth AP ID Physical Location

1. 00:0C:25:14:67:1E C Block-Indoor Court
2. 00:4A:12:81:1A:BD Digital Library
3. 00:82:44:A6:BB:10 Amphitheatre
4. 00:86:31:EA:89:22 Canteen
5. 00:75:C2:78:56:E1 Student Council Center
Figure 1. Network of Different Access Points

Figure 2. System Layout

5. CONCLUSION
The paper mainly introduces a new tracking system that relies on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
simultaneously. The main aim is not only to make the best utilization of the existing
infrastructure available in an organization but make the deployment of the system most
commercially viable by using technologies that are already available with the
consumers. In the proposed system, the authors have achieved a tracking accuracy of 10
meters which is the range of the Class 3 BT devices and is the most prevalent class of
BT devices.
Another advantage of using such a system lies in its use of mobile phones for tracking.
With development of mobile phone apps on almost all platforms at such a large scale,
there is a lot of scope of adding new capabilities and features to this system. One such
example would be to generate a map/path based on the location of the user making
request and the location tracked which would further ease the process of positioning.

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Authors

Rohit Agrawal is currently working as a Graduate Engineer Trainee with Magneti Marelli
Powertrain India Ltd. in the Manufacturing Department. He is involved in various automation
projects in the Process and Testing areas. He completed his engineering graduation from
VIT University, Vellore in the year 2011 in Electronics and Communication Department.

He did an internship project on Power Optimization in Numeric LCD’s at India Institute

of Technology, Bombay. He carried out his final year project in Delphi Automotive –
Technical Center India on Automotive Diagnostics. He is the author of two papers Springer and
IEEE respectively illustrating his above project works. He is also involved in an incubated project
under Technopreneurship Promotion Programme (TePP) by Department of Science and Technology.
His areas of interest include Embedded Systems Design, In-vehicle Networking and Wireless
Communication.

Ashesh Vasalya is currently pursuing final year of B.Tech degree in Electronics and Instrumentation
Engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology University (VIT-U), Vellore, India, 2008-12.

He has worked for Mini Baja SAE India 2011 and has completed his academic internship on
the Implementation of MOST25 Protocol at TIFAC-CORE in automotive Infotronics, Department of
Science and Technology, Govt. of India. He is currently the board member of
ISOI (Instrument Society of India) VIT-U branch and the member of SAE (Society of Automotive
Engineers). He is currently doing his major project on Self Optimization of 3G and 4G LTE Systems.
He is also the IEEE author of a paper on Robotics. His areas of interests are Advanced Robotics,
Advanced Embedded Device Driver and Automotive Communication Protocols.