Personnel tracking system using a Bluetooth-based epidemic protocol

Abimael Sosa, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Tracking systems provide valuable information about the tracked individuals/items. The use of these systems provides a method of having control over the goods of a merchant; it allows the inventorying and warehousing of the products. In environments of high security, they are used for access control, i.e. informing about a person's previous visits to areas of high level of security. This thesis presents a personnel tracking system using Bluetooth technology based on the epidemic protocol. The purpose is to automatically obtain information of a person's previous contacts with other people by using Bluetooth-enabled devices that communicate wirelessly with each other whenever they are in proximity. Whenever a peer discovers another, a record is created including the identification number of both and the current time. Then, both users exchange records of previous contacts with other peers, and the acquired data is stored in memory. This process repeats until the user comes in contact with a Bluetooth access point, hence all data in memory is uploaded to server. The main idea is that a record originated in a certain member of the network will eventually arrive to the server through other peers due to the widespread of the infectious message. The tracking system has been implemented in two programs: BlueTrack and BlueServer. BlueTrack is the program that performs the tracking and runs on the PDAs only. In the other hand, BlueServer is the program running on the access points. The software was tested in a Pocket PC. Cell phones and Pocket PCs were randomly distributed within an area. Most of the work involved software development and just a small amount of hardware for the testing part. The results show that the system provides accurate information of every contact among users within the network.

Subject Area

Electrical engineering|Epidemiology|Systems design

Recommended Citation

Sosa, Abimael, "Personnel tracking system using a Bluetooth-based epidemic protocol" (2007). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI1449726.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI1449726

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