iABACUS: A Wi-Fi-Based Automatic Bus Passenger Counting System

Since the early stages of the Internet of Things (IoT), one of the application scenarios that have been affected the most by this new paradigm is mobility. Smart Cities have greatly benefited from the awareness of people habits to develop efficient mobility services. In particular, knowing how people use public transportation services and move throughout urban infrastructure is crucial in several areas, among which the most prominent are tourism and transportation. Indeed, especially for Public Transportation Companies (PTCs), long- and short-term planning of the transit network requires to have a thorough knowledge of the flows of passengers in and out vehicles. Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Internet connection, this knowledge can be easily enabled by sensors deployed on board of public transport vehicles. In this paper, aWi-Fi based Automatic Bus pAssenger CoUnting System, namely iABACUS, is presented. The objective of iABACUS is to observe and analyze urban mobility by tracking passengers throughout their journey on public transportation vehicles, without the need for them to take any action. Test results proves that iABACUS efficiently detects the number of devices with an activeWi-Fi interface, with an accuracy of 100% in the static case and almost 94% in the dynamic case. In the latter case, there is a random error that only appears then two bus stops are very close to each other.