Temporal signatures of passive Wi-Fi data for estimating bus passenger waiting time at a single bus stop

Abstract

This paper proposes an alternative method for bus passenger waiting time estimation using passive Wi-Fi data. With the underlying mechanism for Wi-Fi communication, the presence of Wi-Fi enabled devices in a particular area can be passively discoverable. The mobile devices carried by bus passengers can be exploited to estimate passenger waiting time at a bus stop without the passengers' direct participation. Passenger waiting time estimation using such opportunistic data is challenging due to the particular characteristics of the Wi-Fi data collected from bus stop environments. This paper proposes a methodology to handle massive noise in Wi-Fi data and identify the potential Wi-Fi records which are derived from passengers' devices. The filtered data can then be used to estimate passenger waiting time. The Wi-Fi data collected from a bus stop in Hong Kong are used as a case study for evaluating the proposed system. The practicality is investigated in terms of estimation accuracy and insightful analysis.