This paper can be referred as:

M.A Pasha, S.A Hussain, M. Akhlaq, M.T Khan., “Using Bayesian Neural Network for Modeling Users in Location Tracking Pervasive
Applications”, in Proc. of National Conference on Information Technology and Applications, Balochistan, Pakistan, April 21-22, 2005.

Using Bayesian Neural Network for Modeling Users in

Location-Tracking Pervasive Applications
Dr. Pasha M. A. R, Dr. Hussain S.A, Zia K, Akhlaq M, Khan M. T
Punjab University College of Information Technology
University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan-54000
{marpasha, asadhussain, kashif, akhlaq, taimoor}@pucit.edu.pk

Abstract employed, mostly, it is not possible to sense all possible

Location-Tracking is an important aspect of context-aware
pervasive computing applications. Due to technological and cost
constraints, the location-time pairs provided by the current
technologies may be minutes or hours apart. That is why it is
necessary to predict the location of a user based on previous
information. Most researchers predict the location of a user based
on history of object’s direction, last reported location and speed.
Others have emphasized the need of including User Models, to
estimate the location more effectively. Managing user models
require techniques to acquire and model the knowledge. Bayesian
Network is a statistical inference technique that predicts the
probability of an event on the basis of available information.
Neural Networks are parameterized, non-linear models used for
empirical regression and classification modeling. In this paper we
have investigated a case study to evaluate the performance of
Bayesian Learning for Neural Networks in location-tracking
applications for pervasive computing.
1 Introduction
location-time coordinates due to technological or cost
constraints. Therefore a location-tracking system must deal
with the techniques of predicting the location of an object
in between the location-time pairs reported, which may be
minutes or hours apart. It is mandatory to predict the
location of an object on finer temporal point, if needed by
the application. Prediction leads to uncertainty. Hence
managing uncertainty within the tolerable bounds is critical
for any decent location-aware pervasive application.
Researchers have criticized the use of traditional
techniques in estimating the current location of an object5.
These techniques utilize history of moving objects to
estimate the current location, using object direction, last
reported location and speed. Computer scientists have
claimed that this technique is too simplistic to encounter
the real-time dynamic requirements5. In addition, they have
emphasized the need of incorporating the object’s goals,
personalities and tasks into active consideration. In other
words there is a need to build User Models to get more
precise estimation of object’s location.

Mark Weiser’s vision of Ubiquitous Computing

emphasized the need of unifying computers and humans
seamlessly in an environment rich with computing. The
starting sentences of his seminal article “The Computer for
21st Century”1, truly depicts the essence of his vision: “The
most profound technologies are those that disappear. They
weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they
are undistinguishable from it”. A pervasive system has to
be context aware in order to be minimally intrusive2.
Location-tracking is an important aspect of context-aware
applications. It enables the pervasive applications to serve
the user based on his location, thus minimizing the need of
user intrusion to demand the appropriate service.
Many applications based on location-tracking are
developed in the last decade, particularly under the flag of
Mobile Computing3. These applications mostly use Global
Positioning System (GPS)4 as location sensing system. It is
important to realize that all the objects (devices, users,
sensors) need not be location aware in a pervasive
environment. Objects, not capable of sensing their location
directly, can use location-sensing techniques based on
‘Triangulation’, ‘Proximity’ or ‘Scene Analysis’, to sense
their location with respect to nearby location aware
objects3. Moreover, irrespective of location sensing system
2 User Models
User models are means of presenting user (object)’s habits,
preferences and behavior. For example, a cab driver may
have a favorite route when driving from a typical source to
a specific destination. This information can be modeled
using a causality relationship represented by directed graph
as shown in Fig. 1.
Source Destination
Route
Fig. 1. Directed graph representing causality relationship
User models based on the above relationship would be
instances of the blueprint presented by the graph. For
example:
Cab1, City, Railway Station, Route1
Cab1, City, Airport, Route2

National Conference on Information Technology & Applications, 05

 To implement the causality relationship model, initially,
we need a prior assumption of route choice which can be
based on logical reasoning. In this particular example, from
a source A to the destination B, a route choice may be
based on the least distance between A and B, or the time
required to reach at B, or the condition of the roads of the
route. After deciding about the initial allocation, the user
model should be updated based on each cab driver’s
preferences. So, a learning mechanism is needed which can
ensure a consistent user model, based on reported facts.
As presented in Fig. 1, we need a network to represent
the user models. Nodes of the network denote the states we
are interested in and arcs represent causal connections. A
directed acyclic graph is enough to represent this network.
User models are full or partial instances of this network.
The example network on which we have formulated our
case study is borrowed from W. Abdelsalam and Y.
Ebrahim’s efforts5, with slight modification, and is shown
in Fig. 2.
Event Time of day
Source Destination
Route
Weather Condition
Speed
Fig. 2. An example network for taxicab location-tracking
application
The network in Fig. 2 is an example of taxicab location-
tracking application. The network nodes and connecting
arcs show the factors that might affect the current location
of a certain taxicab. For example, starting from nodes
having no parents, we have three determining factors:
Event, Time of day, and Weather Conditions. Event is a list
of events that can occur in the city e.g. a holiday or a
festival. The occurrence of an event has a direct
relationship with the passenger’s Destination which can be
an entertainment spot in case of a festival. Similarly, it has
a relationship with passengers’ Sources. Time of day is
determining the flow of passengers from typical Sources to
Destinations. Weather Conditions affect the Speed of a cab
understandably. Further, Routes are direct consequence of
Source and intended Destination. To study the significance
of the user models based on this taxicab network, we
formulated a case study depicted in Fig. 3.
National Conference on Information Technology & Applications, 05
3 The Case Study
The case study shown in Fig. 3 consists of two types of
nodes. The nodes with black background represent the
factors affecting the choice of the Speed and Routes. The
node Weather Condition affects only the Speed of the cab.
The lower portion of the Fig 3 represents map of the city.
The nodes with white background are the locations in the
city. They can both be treated as Source or Destination.
The black and white strips are roads connecting the spots.
Combinations of these roads from a typical Source to
Destination constitute a Route. It is clear from the map that
there can be more then one routes between two nodes.
Event and Time of day affect the selection of Sources and
Destination and consequently the Route. Speed and Route
when combined, determine the current location of the
taxicab.
To realize the case study, first of all we have to store the
information of map in our database. Every source /
destination (Place) is interconnected. So there would be at
least Place2 basic datasets. Since a single combination can
have more then one routes, the total combinations would
be more than that. Some example datasets are:
Route (City, Railway Station, [R6, R5])
Route (City, Railway Station, [R6, R7, R2, R3])
Route (City, Railway Station, [R8, R7, R5])
Route (City, Railway Station, [R8, R2, R3])
This also satisfies the situation in which source is Railway
Station and destination is City, if visualized in reverse
order.
Having resolved the relationships in the map, which
leads to datasets describing the Routes, we are ready to
take on other factors. Let Event has three values for this
example; the relations can be stored as:
Event (Festival)
Event (Holiday)
Event (No Event)
The datasets for Time of day can be:
Time of day (Morning)
Time of day (Evening)
The datasets for Weather Conditions can be:
Weather Condition (Rainy)
Weather Condition (Normal)
The datasets of above three factors have only one attribute,
as they have no parent.
As we move on to Source, it is evident from Fig. 2 that
it has two parents i.e. Event and Time of day. So its
datasets would be different combinations of Events and
Times as:
Source (Festival, Morning, Railway Station)
Source (Festival, Evening, Airport)
Similar is the case with Destination:
Destination (No Event, Morning, Gulberg)

Weather Condition
Event
Scale 1cm = 5km
Source /
Destination
R3
Route City R6 R5 Railway
Station
Rx = Road
R2
R8 R7
Mozang
R9
Fig. 3. Case Study - Taxicab location-tracking application
It is noteworthy that Gulberg is a place in which most of
the offices are located. Route can be explained by
combinations of sources and destinations as described
earlier. The last factor is Speed which is quite easy to
represent as it depends on Weather Conditions and Route:
Speed (Rainy, [R6, R5], 40)
Speed (Normal, [R6, R5], 60)
Having recorded all the necessary information in the
database, we are ready now to execute a scenario.
3.1 Example Scenario
We have a recorded location of Cab1 at 10 A.M. The next
update would be available at 11 A.M. Our location tracking
application calculates the location of Cab1 at 10:30 A. M.
Let’s say following information is available at 10 A.M.
Source = City
Weather Condition = Normal
Event = Festival
Time of day = Morning
Given the above data, it is predicted that the user would be
heading Jallo (an entertainment spot) from City. He would
be acquiring the route R6 Æ R5 Æ R3 Æ R4 since it
seems to be the shortest (initially inferred by system).
Since the weather is fine, he would be having a speed of
60km/hr. So by multiplying 60 / 60 * 30, we get 30km. We
can conclude from here that he would have reached 30km
from City on that route, and would be at R4.
Let’s say at 11 A.M. we got his location, and he proved
to be at R2 at 10:30. It means that he has acquired the route
R6 Æ R7 Æ R2 Æ R4 due to some reason. The behavior
of Cab1 has changed due to its own preferences and our
system should learn from this behavior. For that we have to
create an instance of our model for Cab1 and store this
information against Cab1. A learning mechanism should be
National Conference on Information Technology & Applications, 05
Speed
Time of day
R4
Jallo
Airport
R1
Gulberg
adopted against this instance to ensure cab specific
decisions in future.
4 Learning Methodology
Managing user models require techniques to acquire and
model the knowledge. Predicate Calculus has been a useful
way of acquiring and modeling the knowledge. The
problem with predicate calculus is that the predicates must
be chalked down knowing exactly how different variables
affect other variables. In context-aware applications we
cannot judge the exact behavior of variables in advance.
Bayesian Network (BN) is proposed5 as an alternative
which does not need prior information about how variables
affect others. BNs implement a statistical inference
technique that predicts the probability of an event on the
basis of available information. When compared with
predicate calculus, BNs is more realistic choice for
modeling users due to the fact that BNs do not require
exact knowledge of dependencies in advance. Moreover,
the probabilities of the happening of an event can be
refined by learning from history. Still, BNs require a static
initial allocation of probabilities, which make them
susceptible for error prone decisions for a substantial time
before it finally reaches to the probabilities almost opposite
to the initial allocation. Researchers have exploited the
overlap between the fields of neural networks and statistics
using strengths of both worlds to guarantee appropriate
learning in all situations6.
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is parameterized non-
linear models used for empirical regression and
classification modeling. Their flexibility makes them able
to discover more complex relationships in data then
traditional statistical models8. Conventional approaches of
learning in ANN are based on the minimization of an error
function, and are often motivated by some underlying
principle such as maximum likelihood. Such approaches
can suffer from a number of deficiencies, including the
problem of determining the appropriate level of model
complexity. More complex models (e.g. ones with more
hidden units or with smaller values of regularization
parameters) give better fits to the training data, but if the
model is too complex it may give poor generalization (the
phenomenon of over-fitting)9.
There is considerable overlap between the fields of
neural networks and statistics7. Bayesian Learning for
Neural Networks shows that Bayesian methods allow
complex neural network models to be used without fear of
the over-fitting that can occur with traditional neural
network learning methods10. For many practical problems,
the hierarchical Bayesian neural network approach is
shown to be superior to the one based on hierarchical
Bayesian logistic regression model as well as the classical Fig. 4. Two-dimensional input sampled (Black and Gray) from
feed-forward neural networks11. a mixture of four Gaussians.

4.1 Bayesian Learning for Neural Networks We created a two-layer Multiple Layer Perceptron
(MLP) network with 6 hidden units and one logistic output.
In Bayesian learning for Neural Networks, probability is A separate inverse variance hyperparameter was used for
used to represent uncertainty about the relationship being each group of weights (inputs, input bias, outputs, output
learned. Before we have seen any data, our prior opinions bias) and the weights were optimised with the scaled
about what the true relationship might be can be expressed conjugate gradient algorithm. After each 100 iterations, the
in a probability distribution over the network weights that hyperparameters were re-estimated twice. There were
define this relationship. After we look at the data, our eight cycles of the whole algorithm. Further, we trained an
revised opinions are captured by a posterior distribution MLP without Bayesian regularisation on the same dataset
over network weights12. using 400 iterations of scaled conjugate gradient. We
plotted the function represented by the trained networks.
We show the decision boundaries (output = 0.5) and the
5 Simulation optimal decision boundary given by applying Bayes'
theorem to the true data model, as shown in Fig. 5. Note
The evidence of usefulness of Bayesian learning for neural how the regularised network predictions are closer to the
networks is gathered by simulating a two-class classifier in optimal decision boundary, while the unregularised
MATLAB13. Classification was chosen as a potential test network is over-trained.
due to the reason that the identification of user models
based on history is a typical classification problem. An
open source MATLAB library Netlab14 was used to
implement the statistical behaviors along with Neural
Network Toolbox of MATLAB. We are thankful to Ian T
Nabney’s efforts to code “Bayesian classification for the
MLP” in Netlab, which was used for simulation with
modest refinements.
We generated a synthetic dataset with two-dimensional
input sampled from a mixture of four Gaussians. Each
class is associated with two of the Gaussians so that the
optimal decision boundary is non-linear. The plot of points
generated by two classes is shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 5. Plot of Bayes, Regularized and Unregularized Network

National Conference on Information Technology & Applications, 05

6 Conclusion and Future Work
User models are effective in estimating the location of a
user in location-tracking pervasive applications.
Appropriate learning mechanism is necessary to refine user
models to reflect the current preferences of users, so that
location based application can adapt their behavior
according to context. Bayesian learning for neural
networks provide a combined technique to utilize the
strengths of statistics and AI. It is shown through
simulation that this technique is better then both Bayesian
Networks and Neural Networks if implemented
individually.
The case study presented in this paper can be a useful
test bed for location aware pervasive applications. In future,
we plan to present a framework to implement this case
study with all essential ingredients, in addition to learning
techniques for user models which is addressed in this paper.
Other issues include structure of datasets, inference
techniques, moving objects databases, querying databases,
physical map implementation etc., which need further
investigations.
National Conference on Information Technology & Applications, 05
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