Using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Signal Strength Estimation to Facilitate Contact Tracing for COVID-19

Gary F. Hatke; Monica Montanari; Swaroop Appadwedula; Michael Wentz; John Meklenburg; Louise Ivers; Jennifer Watson; Paul Fiore

arXiv · 2006.15711

Using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Signal Strength Estimation to Facilitate Contact Tracing for COVID-19

Gary F. Hatke·Monica Montanari·Swaroop Appadwedula·Michael Wentz·John Meklenburg·Louise Ivers·Jennifer Watson·Paul Fiore

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Abstract

The process of contact tracing to reduce the spread of highly infectious and life-threatening diseases has traditionally been a primarily manual process managed by public health entities. This process becomes challenged when faced with a pandemic of the proportions of SARS-CoV2. Digital contact tracing has been proposed as way to augment manual contact tracing and lends itself to widely proliferated devices such as cell phones and wearables. This paper describes a method and analysis of determining whether two cell phones, carried by humans, were in persistent contact of no more than 6 feet over 15 minutes using Bluetooth Low Energy signals. The paper describes the approach to detecting these signals, as well as a data-driven performance analysis showing that larger numbers of samples coupled with privacy preserving auxiliary information improves detection performance.

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BibTeX RIS

Gary F. Hatke, Monica Montanari, Swaroop Appadwedula, Michael Wentz, John Meklenburg, Louise Ivers, Jennifer Watson, Paul Fiore. 2020-07-07. Using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Signal Strength Estimation to Facilitate Contact Tracing for COVID-19. https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.15711

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