How does beacon technology work?
What Is Beacon Technology? Beacons are small, wireless transmitters that use low-energy Bluetooth technology to send signals to other smart devices nearby. Put simply, they connect and transmit information to smart devices making location-based searching and interaction easier and more accurate.
How accurate is BLE positioning?
Both indoor positioning using BLE sensors or beacons can deliver location accuracy typically below 5 meters (with optimal conditions and deployment). Bluetooth, similar to Wi-Fi technologies, typically rely on signal strength (RSSI) to estimate the locations of devices.
Why does BLE need location?
By requiring location services to access Bluetooth, you ensure that the user understands their location information may leak when they use Bluetooth. In versions of Android prior to Marshmallow, the user could use Bluetooth without location services enabled, but location information could leak.
How accurate is BLE RSSI?
As part of the broadcast message decoding, the BLE software stacks return the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) value. This value can be used to approximate distance and when measurements from multiple devices are combined, the device position can be estimated with accuracy of 1 to 4 meters (3 to 12 feet).
How does iBeacon work?
Each iBeacon transmits periodically short identification frames that are received by a mobile BLE device to estimate the distance between the mobile device and the iBeacon using received signal strength indicator (RSSI).
What is a BLE Beacon?
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacons, are small devices that can be applied to almost any surface, and communicate messages to nearby devices using Bluetooth. The technology mainly finds its use within advertising, and informing smartphone users of nearby points of interests. A BLE Beacon broadcasts small packets of data, with a certain interval.
What is proximity detection in iBeacon?
], which allows a mobile device to detect its proximity to an iBeacon station (and possibly its location) by knowing how close it is to (usually wall-mounted) low-complexity, low-cost BLE transmitters, the iBeacons.
What is the future of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and iBeacons?
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and the iBeacons have recently gained large interest for enabling various proximity-based application services. Given the ubiquitously deployed nature of Bluetooth devices including mobile smartphones, using BLE and iBeacon technologies seemed to be a promising future to come.