Room-level proximity detection using beacon frame from multiple access points

Proximity detection, a technique to recognize if users exist nearby, is attracting a lot of attentions nowadays. The information for proximity of users can be an indicator of users´ reliability. Some methods of proximity detection, without localization of users, utilize similarity of received signals such as FM, bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ambient sounds. However, ambient sounds can be similar even when users are not nearby and the available range of proximity detection in the methods utilizing other signals is limited and varying from half of the wavelength to 2 m. The purpose of this study is to realize room-level proximity detection without localization: we propose a method based on similarity of received signal strength (RSS) of beacon frames received from ambient multiple access points. Through experiments, in which we recognize whether or not users exist in the same room with a size approximately equal to 5 m square, we demonstrate that our proposed method can be applied to room-level proximity detection.