Bluetooth\uae-based travel time/speed measuring systems development

DTRT06-G-0044Agencies in the Houston region have traditionally used toll tag readers to provide travel times onfreeways and High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, but these systems require large amounts of costly andphysically invasive infrastructure. Bluetooth is a widely used technology embedded in cellular telephones andin-vehicle applications for exchanging data over short distances. The initial demonstrations of wirelessaddress matching were primarily designed to prove the ability for Bluetooth technology to produce matchesbetween two points on a roadway outfitted with the proper Bluetooth reader equipment, with a resulting traveltime and speed calculated. Costs for Bluetooth travel time measurement systems are one to two orders ofmagnitude below costs for traditional toll tag reader equipment, depending on the application. This costadvantage could significantly lower the threshold for hundreds of agencies and private entities to enter thetravel time measurement market, but there is little guidance on the application. Development and testing ofvarious prototype software and hardware platforms were conducted to use the anonymous Media AccessControl (MAC) address from each Bluetooth device to measure and report real-time traffic conditions.Several issues were examined and resolved in order to develop a true first generation \u201cproduct.\u201d Thedevelopment of this method and process is pending patent approval.17. Ke