	US 11,722,852 B1
	Smartphone clustering method
Uthman Baroudi, Dhahran (SA); and Yousef Ahmed Ahmed Ali, Dhahran (SA)
Assigned to KING FAHD UNIVERSITY OF PETROLEUM AND MINERALS, Dhahran (SA)
Filed by KING FAHD UNIVERSITY OF PETROLEUM AND MINERALS, Dhahran (SA)
Filed on Sep. 28, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/936,212.
Application 17/936,212 is a continuation of application No. 17/742,010, filed on May 11, 2022, granted, now 11,490,228.
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. H04W 4/029 (2018.01); H04W 4/80 (2018.01)

CPC H04W 4/029 (2018.02) [H04W 4/80 (2018.02)]

11 Claims

1. A method for using a smartphone clustering application, comprising:

identifying, by each smartphone equipped with the smartphone clustering application, a cluster of neighboring smartphones equipped with the smartphone clustering application;

determining, by each smartphone in the cluster, a cluster head;

determining, by the cluster head, its position;

transmitting over near field communication, by each smartphone in the cluster, personal information to the cluster head;

receiving, by the cluster head, the personal information from each of the neighboring smartphones;

aggregating, by the cluster head, its personal information with the personal information from each of the neighboring smartphones, thus generating an aggregated personal information;

combining, by the cluster head, its position with the aggregated personal information into a communication stream;

identifying, by the cluster head, an access point;

transmitting, by the cluster head, a communication stream to the access point;

transmitting, by the access point, the communication stream to a server side smartphone clustering application;

determining, by each smartphone, the cluster head by calculating a cost function;

sharing, by each smartphone, over near field communication, its cost function with each of the neighboring smartphones; and

identifying, by each smartphone in the cluster, the smartphone with the lowest cost function as the cluster head,

wherein calculating the cost function comprises:

calculating the following equation:

cost_i=αH_i+βM_i+γβ_i

where H_iis a clustering cost parameter representing a history of a smartphone (i) as a cluster head, M_irepresents a mobility of the smartphone (i) and β_irepresents an available battery of the smartphone (i), coefficients α, β and γ determine the weight of each cost parameter to the total clustering cost of the node where:

α+β+γ=1,

subject to the constraint that:

α>β>γ;

determining position information for each smartphone relative to at least one access point;

correlating the position information for each smartphone with a stored profile of an owner of each smartphone, wherein the stored profile includes an itinerary of the owner of the smartphone; and

when a smartphone is not at an expected position based on the itinerary, transmitting a notification message to an emergency response facility, wherein the notification message includes the itinerary of the owner of the smartphone and the position of the cluster head.