학술논문

Population size estimation using a few individuals as agents
Document Type
Conference
Source
2011 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory Proceedings Information Theory Proceedings (ISIT), 2011 IEEE International Symposium on. :2499-2503 Jul, 2011
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Computing and Processing
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Bluetooth
Optical wavelength conversion
Mobile handsets
Animals
Biological system modeling
Maximum likelihood estimation
Language
ISSN
2157-8095
2157-8117
Abstract
We conduct an experiment where ten attendees of an open-air music festival are acting as Bluetooth probes. We then construct a parametric statistical model to estimate the total number of visible Bluetooth devices in the festival area. By comparing our estimate with ground truth information provided by probes at the entrances of the festival, we show that the total population can be estimated with a surprisingly low error (1.26% in our experiment), given the small number of agents compared to the area of the festival and the fact that they are regular attendees who move randomly. Also, our statistical model can easily be adapted to obtain more detailed estimates, such as the evolution of the population size over time.