Location-aware system for content delivery using Bluetooth low energy technology

Abstract

There is increasing interest in developing technologies that attempt to deliver content based on user's location. Although many applications can be used for this task, there are still obvious limitations that require improvement. In this paper, location-aware mobile system is developed using Bluetooth Low Energy technology (BLE). The Apple iBeacon protocol that utilises BLE technology is used for this system, which aims to help event organisers to enhance attendees' experience by providing location-based content such as PDFs, images and videos. To explore the findings, an experiment was carried out on an event with different scenarios. As a result, the range of beacon device was approximately 40 meters which is an acceptable range for delivering the content as planned. In addition, all of the beacons were broadcasting content to attendees in expected manner, which resulted in high success rate. Regarding the response time, users did not exceed 10 seconds for retrieving content.