Bluetooth-based indoor proximity sensing for nursing context awareness

This paper proposes a Bluetooth-based indoor proximity detection method for nursing context awareness. We exploit proximity between Bluetooth devices attached to people and objects for estimating 1) room-level proximity of people and objects, and 2) mutual proximity between moving people and objects. We show that the proximity information exchanged between several devices can be updated at a rate of more than 1 Hz by effectively choosing the timing parameters of Bluetooth inquiry mechanism. Empirical results of evaluating the receiver signal strength indicator (RSSI) at various distances between devices are also shown.