Fundamental understanding on the use of Bluetooth scanner as a complementary transport data

•Bluetooth MAC scanner (BMS) communication and data acquisition process is modelled.•Errors in BMS data are modelled.•Accuracy and reliability of travel time estimates from the BMS data are quantified.

Literature is limited in its knowledge of the Bluetooth protocol based data acquisition process and in the accuracy and reliability of the analysis performed using the data. This paper extends the body of knowledge surrounding the use of data from the Bluetooth Media Access Control Scanner (BMS) as a complementary traffic data source. A multi-layer simulation model named Traffic and Communication Simulation (TCS) is developed. TCS is utilised to model the theoretical properties of the BMS data and analyse the accuracy and reliability of travel time estimation using the BMS data.