Accurate Extraction of Face-to-Face Proximity Using Smartphones and Bluetooth

The availability of "always-on" communications has tremendous implications for how people interact socially. In particular, sociologists are interested in the question if such pervasive access increases or decreases face-to-face interactions. Unlike triangulation which seeks to define precise position, the question of face-to-face interactions reduces to one of proximity, i.e. are the individuals within a certain distance? Moreover, the problem of proximity estimation is complicated by the fact that the measurement must be quite precise (1-1.5m) and can cover a wide variety of environments. Existing approaches such as GPS and WiFi triangulation are insufficient due to those constraints. In contrast, Bluetooth, which is commonly available on most smartphones, provides a compelling alternative for proximity estimation. In this paper, we demonstrate through experimental studies the efficacy of Bluetooth for this exact purpose. We present several real world scenarios and explore Bluetooth proximity estimation on Android with respect to accuracy and power consumption.