Power Consumption

Like most things, beacons require a power source but it needs to be small enough to fit. A coin cell battery works the best and carries the special discharge characteristics necessary for pulse load. Combine that with Bluetooth® Smart technology and you enable many innovative uses including deployment in buildings and stores and even on moving objects like cars and pets. In the future, the industry could see beacon-enabled luggage and garage-door openers. Taking it even further, developers could add small solar panels that use the indoor lighting to power a beacon. Check out this reference design from Texas Instruments on the light-harvesting beacons.

Support from Handsets

Beacons require native support from the mobile operating system (OS) for the beacon-advertising event. The important part is that once customers opt in, the mobile OS will automatically launch the app or deliver a notification to the phone without any user interaction—regardless of what mode (suspended, sleeping or in the background) the app is in. Major platforms including iOS, Android, WebOS and even Chrome are working on this now.

Payload of a Beacon Packet

This part varies in different beacon designs. Some beacons send out a URL in the protocol data unit as the resource endpoint. Others just transmit a unique ID to the app and get the resource from the cloud. Please keep in mind that the payload significantly influences the power consumption of the transmitter. The smaller the payload, the less effort the lower level needs to make.

Does the Beacon Know Who I Am?

Almost all existing beacons are using non-connectable, indirect advertising. This means that the beacon is not collecting the information. However, once the beacon triggers a data request to the cloud servers (most likely with beacon info), the server could still log the information. The privacy protection for the customer should focus more on the app side than that on the beacon itself.

Accurate Location? Maybe…

Some developers use Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) to triangulate the exact location of the receiver. By definition, RSSI is a rough calculation of the signal strength and many factors could interfere with data accuracy. A more precise term for this is “ranging” instead of “location.” With some work on calibration, it could accurately define a smaller range. On the other hand, hardware/integrated circuit manufacturers are revising the antenna design and performance to improve accuracy.

Hope this is helpful to understanding the Bluetooth Smart beacon. For more questions or suggestions, please send them to [email protected]

Happy Developing!