Peer-to-Peer Bluetooth Tracking Service Project

Suggested size

Master's Thesis/15ECTS project; workload: 20% theoretical/80% practical.

Objective

Demonstrate that peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks can support an ad hoc, lightweight tracking system.

Goal

Implement a Bluetooth tracking system, communicating via a P2P overlay network running on a LAN, which can be rapidly deployed by inserting a Bluetooth USB dongle and USB memory stick.

Content

A tracking system is a system that is able in real time to track the geographical location (e.g., x-y coordinate, room, or zone) of mobile units. A number of stationary computers can be fitted with Bluetooth transmitters, allowing each computer to detect mobile Bluetooth units in its vicinity by scanning.

This can be used to provide a mobile unit tracking service: Whenever a mobile unit is detected to have arrived or left the vicinity, the stationary computer can notify any subscribers of the tracking service. Such a tracking service could provide an interface based on the Web Service (WS) standards.

By implementing the tracking service using P2P technology, there is no need for a dedicated centralised server. Instead, all information about service subscribers and mobile device locations is maintained in the P2P network.

The system can be rapidly deployed in an ad hoc manner by storing on a USB memory stick a small setup application that is automatically run when the stick is inserted into the computer. Using IP multicast for discovering other peers on the LAN, the computer can enter the P2P network.

• Design and implement an API for the tracking system
• Use existing P2P middleware (or develop it yourself) to enable the computers to communicate.
• Figure out how the results of paging replies concurrently from several nodes should be interpreted.
• Use IP multicast to design and implement initial peer discovery.

• Design and implement Bluetooth scanning, conveying information via the P2P network.
• Design and implement a setup utility for rapid ad hoc deployment.

Possible supervisors

Literature

• Bluetoothtracking.org.
• Coulouris, Dollimore, Kindberg: Distributed Systems. Pearson 2005:
  • Peer-to-Peer Systems, Ch. 10.
  • IP Multicast, Section 4.5.1.
  • Discovery Services, Section 16.2.1.
• FreePastry, a P2P overlay network.
• IP multicast.
• BlueCove Java library for accessing Bluetooth from J2SE.
• AvetanaBluetooth commercial Java library for accessing Bluetooth from J2SE.
• 32feet.NET and Bluetooth.NET libraries for accessing Bluetooth from .NET.
• Axis2/Java WS server.
• Using AutoRun with a USB Flash Drive.
• Maps of ITU.
• OGC Location Services (OpenLS): Tracking Service Interface Standard. Open Geospatial Consortium, 2008.
• OpenGIS Geography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard, Section 10.3.1. Open Geospatial Consortium, 2007.
• OpenGIS Implementation Specification for Geographic information - Simple feature access - Part 1: Common architecture. Open Geospatial Consortium, 2006.
• Ekahau WLAN-based tracking JavaDoc API, interfaces Location, LocationEstimate and LogicalArea. Ekahau Inc., 2003.
• FreePastry.NET: a .NET library for Pastry in a very early development version.
• P. Bertasi, M. Bonazza, N. Moretti and E. Peserico: PariSync: Clock Synchronization in P2P Networks. IEEE Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization for Measurement, Control and Communication (ISPCS 09), IEEE, pp. 23-28, 2009.
• Christoph Lenzen, Thomas Locher, Roger Wattenhofer: Clock Synchronization with Bounded Global and Local Skew. FOCS'08. IEEE 2008.