Crowd Size Estimation Using CommSense Instrument for COVID-19 Echo Period

The period after the COVID-19 wave is called the Echo-period. Estimation of crowd size in an outdoor environment is essential in the Echo-period. Making a simple and flexible working system for the same is the need of the hour. This article proposes and evaluates a nonintrusive, passive, and cost-effective solution for crowd size estimation in an outdoor environment. We call the proposed system as LTE communication infrastructure based environment sensing or LTE-CommSense. This system does not need any active signal transmission as it uses LTE transmitted signal. So, this is a power-efficient, simple, low-footprint device. Importantly, the personal identity of the people in the crowd cannot be obtained using this method. First, the system uses practical data to determine whether the outdoor environment is empty or not. If not, it tries to estimate the number of people occupying the near range locality. Performance evaluation with practical data confirms the feasibility of this proposed approach.