Analyzing traffic flows with low-cost bluetooth monitoring system and dedicated data-analysis algorithms

Traffic data represent essential information used by city administrators, consultants and developers for traffic management, road network planning and pollutant emissions estimation. Demand for widely spread and low-cost monitoring traffic systems, together with interpretation and analysis of traffic flows and patterns, is therefore rapidly increasing. In this talk, we present our solution to tackle this huge challenge: a BT traffic monitoring system and a dedicated set of data-analysis algorithms.
Currently many vehicles moving in the urban environment carry a BT device (e.g. speakerphone systems, satellite navigation system, infotainment, smartphones, etc.). The presented monitoring system allows to detect the BT signals sent by these devices in order to count the transiting vehicles in the chosen road section. By counting the transiting vehicles in many locations within a target city, or neighborhood, it is possible to identify the main patterns of the devices which send a unique identification signal (MAC address): if the sample is sufficiently wide, a statistical analysis can lead to the identification of the distribution, intensity and time evolution of the traffic flow, and creation of origin-destination matrices. All these information results of essential importance both for network managing purposes.