Location Based Subway Information Service Using Bluetooth

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The subway passengers are usually alert to the current location of the train in order not to miss the destination or transfer stations. The Global Positioning System (GPS), although expensive, can give an alarm if properly programmed, but cannot receive the satellite signals, underground. Therefore, a novel approach to context-aware location-based subway information system is motivated. The passengers, who are equipped with mobile devices such as laptop, PDA, and mobile phone as clients of the Personal Area Network (PAN), request the Bluetooth connection to the server which is installed in each car of the train. While the sorrel broadcasts the location-based information including the previous station, the current velocity of the train, the distance and time to the next station, the clients provide additional services based on the recognized context of the information, and what the passengers individually want. The services are spontaneous and autonomous rather than passive. The services include not only the information on the nearby stations, exit numbers, connection buses but also the location-based alarms which can be set specific to various personal requests, and sounded by the location of the train rather than time. Whereas the arrival time may not be accurate due to the delays of the train, the location can be accurately traced and broadcast by the server. Also, the clients do not need any expensive systems like GFS. Towards validating the proposed approach, we implemented a Bluetooth PAN including a PC server, two PDA clients and a laptop client. We modeled a train on the Incheon Subway Line #1 and a train on the Seoul-to-Incheon Line on the server, simulated the virtual trains together with the real clients. and verified that all the services were successfully provided.