Acoustic Beacon for Smartphones to Support Optimum Wi-Fi Spot Connection

We propose an acoustic beacon for smartphones to support optimum Wi-Fi spot connection. This acoustic beacon transmits a modulated sound that contains public WiFi spot information such as SSID to a specific range corresponding to the Wi-Fi service area. This sound advertises users the existence of a Wi-Fi spot by auditory information. In addition, smartphones of users can be guided to connect to the Wi-Fi spot. As a result, this makes it much easier for users to find and connect the Wi-Fi spot. In this paper, we designed an acoustic communication system that uses a signal of stringed instruments that has harmonic structure. We also investigated the frequency band of the acoustic signal to equalize coverage area of Wi-Fi radio waves and acoustic waves. Moreover, we evaluated the performance of the acoustic communication system in experiments. The obtained results suggest that the proposed system could transmit data with a bit error rate of 0 if there is a clear line–of–sight path between the transmitter and receiver.