david beckemeyer’s presentation at ecomm 2009

Harnessing Latent Mobile Phone Resources For Wireless Telemetry

Mobile Phone Sensor-Net

• Mobile phones are practically ubiquitous. Everyone carries them and most of them are turned on and connected 24x7. Today's mobile phones, even the least expensive ones, have sensors, spare cycles, and connectivity. These resources can be applied to a wide variety of Social Telemetry Applications, to powerful, and potentially even troubling, effect. We present findings of a real-world deployment of such a system.

Mobile Phone Sensor-Net

Analysis

P2PSuper-Node

Basic “edge”(people)

Edge-Plus

Fixed (anchor) Node

• Hybrid P2P and client/server

• Autonomous, unattended operation

Mobile Phone Sensor-Net

LocationLocation

ProximityProximity

SignalingSignaling

Basic phone• Bluetooth• SMS

Ambient Awareness Stream

• Autonomous• Peer nodes share

with each other and upload to cooperating “super-nodes” via Bluetooth

• Edge devices can also act on SMS and other triggers (position reports, geofence, etc.)

Ambient Awareness Stream

Location updates

time

Ambient Awareness Stream

Bluetooth devices coming and going

time

• Proximity to other mobiles and fixed (anchor) radios

• Enables “crowd” predictions even if devices are not participating

Mobile Phone Sensor-Net

Theater

Mall

As a person moves around among other people and things, patterns emerge.

Conclusions

• Mobile phones can effectively serve as a Sensor-Net, without noticeable impact to normal phone operations, performance, battery life, reliability etc.• Achieved off-net without carrier participation or cooperation

• Basic phones, “smart” phones, PCs and back-office operating together

• Wi-fi, GPS, and 3G are not required• Get practical and effective results using low-end phones

• Combining location, time, proximity, and signaling provides significantly richer picture than location alone

Thank You

David Beckemeyer

david@telEvolution.com