Face To Face Proximity Estimation using Bluetooth on Smartphone
The communication of always on has tremendous implications with people to interact socially. In particular sociologists are interested in the question if such pervasive access increases or decreases face to face interaction. As face to face communication happens when people are close enough to have conversation in a convenient way. Existing approaches used such as GPS and WiFi triangulation are more complicated to find accurate proximity location and it insufficient to meet the requirements of flexibility and accuracy. Nowadays the Bluetooth which is commonly available on most modern Smartphone provides a compelling alternative for proximity estimation. In this paper, through experimental studies we demonstrate the efficiency of Bluetooth for this exact purpose. We propose a proximity estimation model to determine the distance based on the RSSI values of Bluetooth and light sensor data in different environments. We present several real world scenarios and explore Bluetooth proximity estimation on Android with respect to accuracy and power consumption. KeywordsBluetooth, RSSI, proximity estimation model, smartphones, face to face proximity