Mobile Device Detection through WiFi Probe Request Analysis

Abstract

Estimation of the presence of people in real time is extremely useful for businesses in providing better services while saving money. In this paper, we propose a technique for estimating the number of mobile devices present at a certain place and time, through analysis of WiFi probe requests from smart devices. Our goal is to address the problem through a solution that is immune to Media Access Control (MAC) address randomization strategies. The idea is to make use of information propagated in the environment, without the need to know the real MAC addresses of the devices. A state machine was modeled to detect the arrival, presence, and departure of devices in proximity to the sensors. A hardware prototype was developed for device detection, and its efficiency was evaluated in experiments that involved comparing the results of the proposed method with the manual measurements made by researchers. The proposed method provided very accurate correlations between the number of mobile devices detected and the real number of people in the environment.