BLUETOOTH LOW ENERGY (BLE)

External Contributor: Phone Myint

Wireless communication has been existed for a long time. In early days, people used to use pigeons to communicate with others who lived far. It was the advancement in technology in the 1980’s and 1990’s that demanded the improvement of existing wireless communication technology. That’s when Bluetooth technology along with many other communication methods such as Radio Frequency Identification were developed, and they have been rapidly evolving ever since. Now a day, devices like mobile phones, remote controls, wireless keyboards, headsets, FM radios, satellite television broadcast television, broadcast television, cordless phones, sports equipment, wireless toys, GPS units, key fobs, smartcards can be found everywhere [1]. The Bluetooth wireless technology is designed as a short-range connectivity solution for personal electronics [2].

Bluetooth technology has been around for more than 20 years. Bluetooth allows devices to talk to one another via radio signals [4]. In 1990s, the technology of the electronics devices was exponentially growing such as laptops, portable music players and cell phones were becoming more and more common to the public. Everything had power cables, head phones and other cables so naturally there was a tremendous need for something more convenient and something that is tangle free and that was when the development of the Bluetooth industry standard started. The name Bluetooth comes from the Danish King Harald Blatand who united the Scandinavian people during the 10th century and it was first given as a temporary name but the search for a better name was not successful [2].

After almost a decade later Bluetooth was developed, there was a concern with the power consumption of it. When Bluetooth was being used, the batteries drained very quickly. Most of the time, it is neither convenient nor economical to have to change batteries every day or every two days. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was developed to deal with power issues. Generally, Bluetooth devices are battery powered and BLE devices are expected to have smaller batteries such as coil cell batteries and the technology deals with minimizing on current flow by reducing the peak current and average current [1].

Applications Of Bluetooth Low Energy Technology

There are numerous applications for BLE technology whether it’s just a sensing of things or transferring data or tracking of lost items or tracking assets.

• Crowd Sensing

It would be very useful if we can learn the pattern of crowds and learn the behavior, so we can use this information for advertisements. In this modern days, a lot of retailers are starting to use crowd sensing using Bluetooth. With this technology, things like learning the behavior of certain type of customers and the price tags automatically updated depending on demand or time of a day. There are two kinds of crowd sensing: active and passive sensing. Passive sensing requires no interaction with the user [3]. Active sensing is when the BLE tags transmit the data in the presence of master devices such as smart phones, laptops or a receiver [3].

• Tracking Lost Items

Bluetooth can also be used to track lost items. The tracking of lost and misplaced valuables is a big problem and there have been researches conducted over this issue: for example, like tracking elderly, patients, kids as well as cars, files and keys [5]. Most smart-phones these days already have built-in apps that can track when it gets lost.

• Site Assets Tracking

Construction companies, now a day, has also a tremendous need for BLE technology as they are trying to keep their employees safe and to keep the productivity up at the job sites. Material tracking has always been a big issue in construction and a lot of methods have been developed to optimize and potentially automate material tracking and inventory systems [4]. There are so many ways to track employees and assets including RFID, Wi-Fi, and GPS but most of these options are possible to do but not optimal [4]. Whenever we start designing a system, we need to know the customers’ need, in this case, construction managers. They want to keep the system low cost and it has to be very good on power consumption. To design a tracking system using RFID, the readers are very expensive, and it consumes a lot of power. Wi-Fi covers a wider range, but it will also drain batteries very quickly. Thus, BLE technology is becoming popular in this industry as BLE tags are very cheap, small, and consumes very low power. Some of the BLE products on the market now a day is as small as a figure nail and the battery can last up to 10 years.

To track employees, one way it works is that the employees will be given a BLE tags which is basically like a name tag that is embedded with a little BLE chip that will transmit the signal when those detect the presence of a receiver which will be planted in every room approximately 10 foot by 10 foot space which is possible because the receivers can be embedded in the electrical outlets [6]. The receiver will communicate with the cloud-based main server and record the tag being there. There will also be at least two entry points that will detect if somebody goes in or goes out of the job sites, so the managers will be able to see who’s at the job site and where they are with 10 feet accuracy.

We also want to track the assets for two reasons: first is to know where they are when someone needs it to increase the productivity at a job site, second is to keep track of inventory. It also works the same way as tracking employees. The receiver closet to the asset would pick up the presence of the tag and therefore its location will be recorded and sent to the server.
there are so many applications using BLE technology from sensing crowds to track people. In addition to being cost effective, many of its benefits include mobility, convenience, easy setup, connectivity in remote areas, and enhanced productivity. The process is not too complex, and it is relatively easy to implement.

References

[1] N. Gupta, Inside Bluetooth Low Energy. United States: Artech House Publishers, 2013.

[2] C. Bisdikian, “An Overview of the Bluetooth Wireless Technology”. IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 39, Issue: 12, pp. 86-94, Dec. 2001. DOI: 10.1109/35.968817

[3] A. Basalamah, “Sensing The Crowd Using The Bluetooth Low Energy Tag”. IEEEAccess, Vol. 4, pp. 4225-4233, August 2016. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2594210

[4] A. G. Mohtat, “Construction Material Tracking Inventory Control System Using Smart Bluetooth/NFC Tracking Devices,” M.S. thesis, Dept. Of Civil, Arch. And Env. Eng., Illinois Tech., Illinois, Chicago, May 2016

[5] S. Ahmad, “Never Lose! Smart Phone based Personal Tracking via Bluetooth”, International Journal of Academic Research, Vol. 4 Issue. 3, March 2014.

[6] S. Opoku, “An Indoor Tracking System Based on Bluetooth Technology”, JSAT, Vol. 2, No. 12, Pages 1-8, 2011