A collaborative Bluetooth-based approach to localization of mobile devices

In this paper we present a collaborative Bluetooth localization method, which aggregates the location information about Bluetooth devices that is provided by multiple mobile devices. The method aims to take advantage of an enhanced version of the KNN algorithm in which the location of a mobile device can be determined based on a Bluetooth distance measure. The experimental results showed that there are a sufficient number of Bluetooth devices that are discoverable, which can be used collaboratively to assist with localization requests from mobile devices. In addition, it is shown that the Bluetooth localization method was able to successfully localize the mobile device using the Bluetooth radio. Furthermore, the response time of Bluetooth localization is shown to be less than GPS, and greater than Wi-Fi and Cellular localization methods.