Evaluation of Bluetooth Detectors in Travel Time Estimation

Krit Jedwanna and Saroch Boonsiripant
Additional contact information
Krit Jedwanna: Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon, Bangkok 10300, Thailand
Saroch Boonsiripant: Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, Bangkok 10900, Thailand

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-23

Abstract: With the current popularity of mobile devices with Bluetooth technology, numerous studies have developed methods to analyze the data from such devices to estimate a variety of traffic information, such as travel time, link speed, and origin–destination estimations. However, few studies have comprehensively determined the impact of the penetration rate on the estimated travel time derived from Bluetooth detectors. The objectives of this paper were threefold: (1) to develop a data-processing method to estimate the travel time based on Bluetooth transactional data; (2) to determine the impact of vehicle speeds on Bluetooth detection performance; and (3) to analyze how the Bluetooth penetration rate affected deviations in the estimated travel time. A 28 km toll section in Bangkok, Thailand, was chosen for the study. A number of Bluetooth detectors and microwave radar devices were installed to collect traffic data in October 2020. Five data-processing steps were developed to estimate the travel time. Based on the results, the penetration rate during the day (50 to 90 percent) was higher than during the night (20 to 50 percent). In addition, we found that speed had adverse effects on the MAC address detection capability of the Bluetooth detectors; for speeds greater than 80 km/h, the number of MAC addresses detected decreased. The minimum Bluetooth penetration rate should be at least 1 percent (or 37 vehicles/h) during peak periods and at least 5 percent (or 49 vehicles/h) during the off-peak period.

Keywords: tollway; Bluetooth; detection rate; penetration rate; travel time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/8/4591/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/8/4591/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:8:p:4591-:d:791936

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().