Deeploc: Discreet Indoor People Location Application

Efficient and discreet indoor people location is a service currently considered of great interest. Deeploc is important as a tool to obtain statistical information about areas where people frequently cross. This information is particularly sought after by advertising agencies. Many companies wish to control employees in order to increase security. In addition, people own mobile phones or PDAs that include the basic and the newest communication technologies at reasonable prices. This provides an opportunity to build a system able to interact with those devices for locating and tracking purposes or contextual and awareness services. The approach of this system differs from those in existence because it focuses on identifying people in a zone controlled by a station, rather than providing information about their own position. In this work, such an application is developed, on the basis of a fusion of Bluetooth and WLAN technologies. Bluetooth is used for location purposes by taking advantage of one of its weaknesses: the coverage range. Information detection is distributed by WLAN to reach a server, where information is processed and presented, enabling the administrator to take decisions concerning people´s history of places visited. Finally, the theoretical detection time was verified experimentally.