Survivable Bluetooth location networks

In this paper, we analyze survivability issues of Bluetooth Location Networks (BLN) for location-aware or context-driven mobile networks, such as m-commerce environments or e-museums. We assume that, in any of those scenarios, there exist service servers that need to know user location in real-time, to send context-oriented information to user handhelds when necessary. The BLN transmits position information to service servers, without user participation. It is not subject to line-of-sight constraints and is supported by existing commercial handhelds. BLN users carry either a Bluetooth-enabled handheld or any mobile data terminal and a Bluetooth badge. The BLN is composed by wireless Bluetooth nodes, which establish an spontaneous network topology at system initialization. The BLN can coexist with other Bluetooth systems.