Building Bluetooth Beacon-based Network for Spatial-Temporal Data Collection

Bluetooth beacons are usually configured to send out simple ID information. For the user to send own locational information to a remote server he/she must have a mobile phone with dedicated APP installed, as well as a working Inernet connection. In this study we build a network using Bluetooth beacons, which enables collection of locational information without the presence of Internet connection and mobile phones. Visitors wearing Bluetooth bracelets that broadcasts ID information can be detected by the Bluetooth beacons, and the information will be collected, buffered and relayed to a remote server that is capable of analyzing those information. Worked with a local theme park and performed some real world tests, it is found that this setup is a capable positioning/crowdsensing infrastructure. Preliminary results of data collection and analysis are also presented in this paper.