Dynamic group management with Bluetooth Low Energy

The flourishing ecosystem of the Internet of Things (IoT) provides the enabling technologies for the development of smart cities. In intelligent urban settings, integrated and sustainable mobility plays a key role, especially for children, whose ability to move independently throughout their neighborhood is fundamental, both for themselves and their community. Our case study comes from a stepping stone toward independent mobility, namely a group of children walking to school under adult supervision. For this scenario, we offer a tool based on wireless, wearable nodes that supports adults to safely form and manage a group of children. We describe the application requirements, generalizing them beyond this particular use case. We also offer a prototype implementation that exploits Bluetooth Low Energy connectionless communication to build bi-directional information exchange for group management. Simulations and pilot tests validate the proposed approach in terms of scalability, network performance and battery life.