Meshlium Scanner

Meshlium Scanner works detecting bluetooth and Wifi signals for tracking purposes such as tracking people and traffic in a City.

iPhone and Android devices and in general any device which works with WiFi or Bluetooth interfaces can be detected without the need of being connected to a specific Access Point, enabling the detection of any of these devices which comes into the coverage area of Meshlium.

The idea is to be able to measure the amount of people and cars which are present in a certain point at a specific time, allowing the study of the evolution of the traffic congestion of pedestrians and vehicles.

Users have to do nothing to be detected as the WiFi and Bluetooth radios integrated in their smartphones periodically send a “hello!” message telling about their presence.

The information read from each user contains:

• The MAC address of the wireless interface, which allows to identify it uniquely

• The strength of the signal (RSSI), which gives us the average distance of the device from the scanning point

• The vendor of the smartphone (Apple, Nokia, etc)

• The WiFi Access Point where the user is connected (if any) and the Bluetooth friendly name. Users no connected to an AP will be showed as “free users”.

• The Class of Device (CoD) in case of Bluetooth which allows us to differentiate the type of device (smartphone, hands-free, laptop, LAN/network AP).

With this parameter we can differentiate among pedestrians and vehicles. The coverage areas may be modified by changing the power transmission of the radio interfaces allowing the creation of different scanning zones from a few meters (in order to study a specific point) to dozens of meters (to study the whole street or even the entire floor of a shopping mall)

MeshliumXtreme Smartphone detection Applications related to shopping and street activities:

• Number of people passing daily in a street

• Average time of the stance of the people in a street

• Differentiate between residents (daily matches) and visitants (sporadic matches)

• Walking routes of people in shopping malls and average time in each area

The Vehicle Traffic Monitoring is also another important application as understanding the flow and congestion of vehicular traffic is essential for efficient road systems in cities. Smooth vehicle flows reduce journey times, reduce emissions and save energy. Similarly the efficient flow of pedestrians in an airport, stadium or shopping center saves time and can make the difference between a good and a bad visit. Monitoring traffic - whether road vehicles or people - is useful for operators of roads,

Applications for Vehicle Traffic Detection:

• Monitor in real time the number of vehicles passing for a certain point in highways and roads

• Detect average time of vehicle stance for traffic congestion prevention

• Monitor average speed of vehicles in highways and roads

• Provide travel times on alternate routes when congestion is detected