To first understand what Bluetooth Low Energy, also known as Bluetooth LE, beacons are, let's take a step back and understand what Bluetooth is.

Bluetooth is a wireless technology invented by the CTO of Ericsson Mobile, Dr. Nils Rydbeck and his team in 1989. It was named after the king of Norway and Denmark, Harald Bluetooth, as he united dissonant danish tribes into a single kingdom, the same way Bluetooth technology united mobile devices and computers by enabling communication between both type of devices.

Besides it's characteristic of being a common wireless communication technology amongst different types of devices, it's other key feature is it's a close proximity type of communication, where devices are typically up to 10m apart from each other, while the maximum range Bluetooth supports is 100m. The range of Bluetooth communication is the first key parameter of Beacon technology.

Bluetooth technology has been used massively ever since it was introduced into mobile phones and computers. Anything from connecting your mobile phone to your car so you could make calls from an integrated microphone and hear through the car's speakers; to connecting wireless peripherals like mouses and keyboards to your computer. A more recent use case is connecting your smart watch to your smartphone.

It's a common fear that having Bluetooth switched on your smartphone will bring the battery down in hours. While it does indeed impact your battery charge level, so does mobile network, Wi-Fi, GPS and both the apps themselves either running in the background or the foreground.

There are constant improvements and developments to make technologies like Bluetooth more efficient and less power consuming. That's how we arrived at today's version of the Blueetooth standard called Bluetooth Low Energy, also known as Bluetooth LE or BLE, although it's actually branded as Bluetooth Smart. 

As its name suggests, the key improvement is in its energy consumption. Bluetooth Low Energy devices can be constantly sending messages through Bluetooth for YEARS before replacing batteries or recharging. The lifetime of a Bluetooth LE device is the second key parameter of Beacon technology.

So now that we've explained the basics of Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE, what are Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons, or simply, Beacons?

Beacons are devices that emit the same simple message or signal for anywhere between a couple of months up to 3 years. This makes them ideal for things like:

• Indoor Positioning Systems. By using 3 Beacons that emit signals, you can tell the exact position of another device, usually a smartphone on someone's pocket, you can triangulate its position, similar to how GPS works outdoors.
• Offline Push Notifications. Mobile Apps can send push notifications when they're in the vicinity of a Beacon, with contextual content depending on where the user with the Smartphone is standing, i.e. in front of which Beacon he's standing.

The most common misconception on how Beacon technology works is the idea that the beacon sends a human read-able message or push notification to anyone with Bluetooth switched on their smartphone. It actually takes a Mobile App installed on the smartphone that reacts to the Beacon's signal and sends a Push Notification to the user. We'll explain this in more detail in a future blog post.

Also read:

Regulations for Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons - Part 1

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