Probabilistic Model Based on the Effective Range and Vehicle Speed to Determine Bluetooth MAC Address Matches from Roadside Traffic Monitoring
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138, Issue 1
Abstract
The use of Bluetooth technology to determine vehicle travel times offers several benefits over traditional methods—most notably, an increased amount of data points. An understanding of the Bluetooth device discovery procedure provides insight on the impacts of vehicle speed and device effective range on the number of in-range scan intervals, allowing the data collection setup to be modified to improve the probability of device detection. It is determined that the number of in-range scan intervals increases as vehicle speed decreases and that vehicle speed has a greater influence when the device effective range is decreased. Our match probability is defined as the probability that a single vehicle containing a discoverable Bluetooth radio will be detected by two different scanning radios, not a sampling rate produced by the ratio of MAC detections to total number of passing vehicles. The probability of device detection escalates for roadways with lower functional classification, slower posted speed limits, and during periods of congestion. At speeds of 56 ( ) the probability for a match exceeds 30%, whereas at faster speeds [105 ( )], the probability decreases to under 10% because of poor signal strength. Optimizing the data collection setup to increase the effective range between the target radio and roadside scanning radio will result in an improved probability of device detection for faster traffic streams.
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Acknowledgments
The researchers would like to thank the reviewers for their generous comments on improving this work. The research was performed at the University of Akron and the contents reflect the views of the researchers, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the USDOT or ODOT.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138 • Issue 1 • January 2012
Pages: 43 - 49
Copyright
© 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 1, 2010
Accepted: Apr 7, 2011
Published online: Dec 15, 2011
Published in print: Jan 1, 2012
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