Towards Characterizing Bluetooth Discovery in a Vehicular Context

Bluetooth has, in recent years, gained more and more momentum. New commodity objects and wearables im- plementing Bluetooth Smart technology (Low Energy) are re- leased everyday. In particular, the ever increasing number of discoverable devices both inside and outside a populated area gives us an encouraging insight on future research directions for this technology. In this paper, based on a sensing system developed as an Android application, we evaluate Bluetooth Classic and Low Energy discovery characteristics from a vehic- ular perspective. By recording information about devices nearby (e.g. the number of discovered devices, their signal strength, manufacturer information) and the GPS location we can derive interesting information about a driver’s situation, as well as his/her environment. Presented results indicate that the amount of discovered devices and signal strengths are dependent on velocity and road category. Finally, future work and discussions address potential use-case applications based only on Bluetooth discovery, such as low energy and privacy friendly road and traffic context awareness. The sensing system used in this article is free online under the MIT License.