Wi-Fi probes as digital crumbs for crowd localisation

摘要

While indoor localization techniques based on Wi-Fi RSS measurements have been extensively studied, their application to eavesdropping Wi-Fi probe requests sent from mobile devices in large indoor environments, such as shopping malls, is scarce or absent in the literature. The idea behind this work is to observe Wi-Fi enabled smartphones, especially when they are not associated to a network. They periodically perform active network scanning by issuing probe requests, which are detected by networked sniffing devices produced by Cloud4Wi?. We experimentally investigate the opportunities offered by passive gathering of Wi-Fi probes for purposes of crowd positioning in areas of interest. Our preliminary experimental setting convincingly shows that a small number of sniffing devices may be enough for analysing crowd movements in indoor areas.