SWRA475A January   2015  – October 2016 CC2540 , CC2540T , CC2541 , CC2541-Q1

 

  1.   Bluetooth low energy Beacons
    1.     Trademarks
    2. 1 What is a Beacon?
    3. 2 Bluetooth low energy and Bluetooth Smart
      1. 2.1 Non-Connectable Beacons
      2. 2.2 Connectable Beacons
      3. 2.3 Data Packet
      4. 2.4 Device Address
        1. 2.4.1 Flags
        2. 2.4.2 Manufacturer Specific Data
      5. 2.5 Broadcast Interval
      6. 2.6 Power
      7. 2.7 Range
      8. 2.8 Coexistence
    4. 3 Designing a Bluetooth low energy Beacon
      1. 3.1 Development Kits
      2. 3.2 Creating a Beacon Application With TI Bluetooth low energy-Stack
    5. 4 iBeacon Implementation
      1. 4.1 Overview and Prerequisites
      2. 4.2 Design and Implementation
      3. 4.3 Testing
    6. 5 Proprietary Implementation
      1. 5.1 Overview and Prerequisites
      2. 5.2 Design and Implementation
      3. 5.3 Testing
    7. 6 References
  2.   Revision History

2 Bluetooth low energy and Bluetooth Smart

A Bluetooth low energy device can operate in four different device roles. Depending on the role, the devices behave differently. The first two roles are connection-based:

  • A Peripheral device is an advertiser that is connectable and can operate as a slave in a connection. This could, for example, be a health thermometer or a heart rate sensor.
  • A Central device scans for advertisers and can initiate connections. It operates as a master in one or more connections. Good examples are Smartphones and computers.

This means that the device roles used for established connections are the Peripheral and the Central roles. The other two device roles are used for one-directional communication:

  • A Broadcaster is a non-connectable advertiser, for example, a temperature sensor that broadcasts the current temperature, or an electronic tag for asset tracking.
  • An Observer scans for advertisements, but cannot initiate connections. This could be a remote display that receives the temperature data and presents it, or tracking the electronic tag.

The two obvious device roles for beacon applications are Peripheral and Broadcaster. Both of them send the same type of advertisements with the exception of one specific flag that indicates if it is connectable or non-connectable. A Peripheral device that implements a GATT Server (GATT is an architecture for how data is stored and exchanged between two or more devices) can be branded as a Bluetooth low energy device. So a Bluetooth low energy branding indicates that the device is a connectable Peripheral device that has data, which could be interacted with.

A Bluetooth low energy solution is ideal for beacons because it is low power and the eco-system is already deployed in the majority of smartphones or other Bluetooth low energy enabled devices on the market. The low-power consumption is achieved by keeping the transmission time as short as possible and allowing the device to go into sleep mode between the transmissions.