IEEE International Conference On Recent Trends In Electronics Information Communication Technology, May 20-21, 2016, India
A Bluetooth Low Energy Based Beacon System
for Smart Short Range Surveillance
Anil kumar B G, Bhagyalakshmi K C, Lavanya K, Gowranga K H
Abstract— The aim of this paper is to propose a fault-tolerant
smart system which can render, track and monitor the process of
attendance of students. A smart attendance system is refined in a
systematic manner where the students enter the lecture hall with
an android device which possesses a beacon compatible mobile
app. The main purpose of this system is to minimize the power
consumption of Bluetooth using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
technology, which prevents fraud and favors in an attendance
system by using a Bluetooth smart beacon.
Keywords— Internet of Things (IoT), Barcode, RFID,
Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacon, NFC, Android,
Smart City.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology
that describes the future where the physical objects trait a
unique address, employ embedded technology to interact for
internet connectivity. In the present world the power
diminution is very eminent in organization [1]. The IoT
paradigm finds enactment in enormous fields such as
automation of homes, medical aids, smart waste management,
mobile, healthcare, traffic management, smart city, attendance
and much more [2].
A. Smart City Evolution
The technology has created a great impact in our everyday
life where the gadgets like mobile phones, television, watches
are smart. The impact of technology as transformed the things
around us into smart objects which can just be connected to
the internet and can exchange the data.
The evolution of cities in the twenty-first century will be
based on emerging concept of the smart city. The
fundamentals to the smart city are sensor networks and
processing systems. The aim of a smart city is to improve the
standard of services like maintenance of structural health of
buildings, waste management, city energy consumption, and
traffic congestion, smart parking; smart lighting where the
entire services provided for the city is automated [3].
B. Bar Code
Barcode technology works on the principle called
"Symbology". It inclines the scaling and comprehension of the
encoded information or data. The Barcode scanner is mainly
used to scan the student/employee card which consists of
unique identification number [4].
Anil kumar B G, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Vijaya Vittala Institute of Technology,Bangalore, India.
Bhagyalakshmi K C,Department of Computer Science and EngineeringVijaya
Vittala Institute of Technology,Bangalore, India.
Lavanya K,Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Vijaya Vittala Institute of Technology,Bangalore, India
. specimens. The finger print reader is an authoritative method
Gowranga K H,Department of Computational and Data Sciences
Indian Institute of Science,Bangalore, India.
(E-mail: gowranga@cds.iisc.ac.in)
978-1-5090-0774-5/16/$31.00 © 2016 IEEE
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The barcode should be scanned by laser to read the data.
1D barcodes are simple and can be scanned by simple laser,
whereas 2D barcodes are complex and cannot be read by
simple laser but can be read by linear barcode technology. The
limitations of Barcode technology is that they are more
expensive and breakdown if it is of a low quality level.
C. RFID
In recent years many technologies have been evolved,
Radio Frequency Identification is one of them, RFID uses
electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags
attached to objects. The tags contain electronically
accumulated data.
RFID is an automatic identification technology used for
reacquiring the data on RFID Tags without any materialistic
contact. RFID system consists of various components for
communication like Tags, Antenna, Reader, Middleware and
Backend Database [5].
RFID tags are widely used in the identification of goods or
person, within a minimum distance of the reader. Tags can
also be put on vehicles, which can be scanned at a distance.
The tag can be scanned if passed near a reader, even if it is
covered by the object or not visible, RFID tags can be scanned
hundreds at a time. The limitations of RFID are the
dependency of an RFID system includes primary hardware
like tags, reader, and software makes it difficult from
accessing the system. The accuracy of the system depends on
the kind of tags, reader and the proximity or the nearness of
tag and the reader.
D. NFC
Certain limitations of RFID can be overcome using Near
Field Communication (NFC) technology. NFC is a wireless
communication technology which enables two devices to
communicate with each other, where one device is portable.
The NFC feature compared to other wireless technology is it
provides directional communication. NFC is often called as
"Next Generation of RFID" as it works technically based on
RFID principle [6].
The challenges of NFC is its operation range is its
proximity of working is 10 cm, the data transfer rate is
424 K bits per second the maximum range make it unsuitable
when a large amount of data is to be transferred.
E. Finger Print System
Yet another most realistic attendance system uses finger
print technique to incorporate the attendance and to caliber the
absence by archiving and comparing the finger print
that can uniquely identify the person without the problem of
being overwritten. Limitations of this finger print system are
 IEEE International Conference On Recent Trends In Electronics Information Communication Technology, May 20-21, 2016, India

that these are expensive and easily susceptible to errors of the d) Beacon: The technology of Beacon is Bluetooth
reader. Low Energy.
F. Beacon e) Server: To maintain the attendance system.
In this paper we deal with BLE Beacon based short range
surveillance system. This system uniquely identifies the
UID and is not prone to attacks or any manipulations. Beacon
technology is a tremendous step in tracking. Beacon is just a
small hardware device which keeps emitting radio signals. The
UID that is broadcast can be identified by the app running on
“Smart” phones. Beacons are largely classified into three
methods Check Point, Zone, and real-time tracking [7].
Beacons are unique they possess a Unique
Identification (UID) by which they can be easily tracked.
Beacon uses the Bluetooth Low Energy [8] connections to
transmit messages to the smartphone directly. It estimates the
nearness by using the high, medium and low signals that the
app is receiving [9]. iBeacon is the protocol systematized by
apple. iBeacon is limited to iOS devices. Eddystone is an open
source works both on android and iOS. Applications are
enormous most commonly used in retail sectors for
advertising. The advantages of using Beacon is that it does not
require any additional device and ranges up to 100m and is
more accurate than GPS in indoor tracking.
II. PROPOSED BLE BASED BEACON SYSTEM
In this paper we are proposing a Bluetooth Low Energy
based beacon for the attendance system. It overcomes certain
drawbacks like it doesn’t require any extra device such as a
scanner for scanning the card as the barcode system. In
RFID the card must to be brought near to the reader manually
to get it scanned, while the proposed system does not require
any manual action. In NFC the tag should be brought within
the range of 5cm whereas a BLE Beacon range is up to 100cm.
In the Fingerprint system the presence of the person is
recorded only if the person manually goes near the reader and
gets the finger print recorded.
Fig .1: Flow of Operation of Proposed System
Student login and Student Authentication to the app is the
prime factor in the proposed system. Every student login into III. METHODOLOGY
the app uses a unique identification (university seat number)
as the username along with the password which is stored in the B. Implementation
database.
As soon as the student enters the beacon range, the app
The student should install an app which is developed for automatically registers the time and sends the message to the
generating automatic attendance and once the app is installed server and checks the individual student information existing
on the android device, the student should get registered with in database and generates the attendance and then goes for
his/her unique university number and password and once after sleep mode till the next lecture hour and again it starts its
the registration gets successful, the notification will be popped process automatically to generate attendance.
asking permission to enable the Bluetooth and once the
Bluetooth is enabled the device interacts with the BLE beacon If the student data is not registered in the database, then
signal and finally generates the attendance. Fig 1: Initially, the he/she will not get the attendance. If the registered student
student should install an app on their android device. The device is not detected in a predefined time-out period, he/she
Bluetooth should be in ON mode when the app is running. If will not get the attendance. The data will be updated after
the Bluetooth is in OFF mode the process gets terminated. every lecture hour and can be verified on the attendance
A. Software requirements and hardware requirements management system by the Professor/Administrator.
a) App: The app is developed with C# programming
language using Xamarin android. The app provides The details of both presence and absence of the student
an interface to student and web server. will be displayed in the attendance management system and if
b) Database: The database consists of tables, which the student is absent for particular lecture hour, then the "Send
stores records. SMS" button will be displayed along with the details of the
c) Android device: The version of android operating student. If the button is pressed by the Professor/
system 4.2 and above with bluetooth. Administrator, the message will be sent to the phone of the

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 IEEE International Conference On Recent Trends In Electronics Information Communication Technology, May 20-21, 2016, India

student or to the phone number of his/her parents that is

initially registered by the student during the admission to the
college.

IV. RESULTS
The desired results are obtained based on the android
device and the web based attendance management system. The
various forms of results are as illustrated in the following:

Fig 2 shows that the smart college app installed on home

screen of the android smart device.

Fig .4: Mobile Attendance Page

Fig 5: A web based attendance management system page,

depicting how a Professor/Administrator can check the
number of students present and absent in different department
by clicking on the dropdown list and can check for different
lecture by clicking on lecture dropdown list.

Fig .2:Logo of the App

Fig 3: The student should register with his/her unique ID as

username and password. Only if the registration is successful,
the app popup notification appears and offers an option to turn
on the Bluetooth.

Fig.5: Popup Notification for Bluetooth ON

Fig 6: In bar graph, the blue colour indicates the

Fig 3: Login Page
Fig.4.The student's device which is registered
successfully with valid unique ID and password gets
connected with Bluetooth smart beacon. Particular student's
device gets attendance notification in green background for
that particular lecture hour and if the smart device does not
communicate with the BLE beacon signal within the stipulated
time-out period, the device gets absent notification with red
background.
percentage of students present and the orange colour indicates
the percentage of students is absent.
By clicking on the orange colour we get the table which
displays the name of the students, who are absent and it also
provides an option called 'Send SMS ' for the absentees.
By clicking on blue colour we get the table which displays
the name of the students who are present for that particular
subject's lecture hour.

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 IEEE International Conference On Recent Trends In Electronics Information Communication Technology, May 20-21, 2016, India

REFERENCES

[1] Dr. Kamlesh Sharma, Dr.T.Suryakanthi," Smart System: loT for

Fig.6: Web Attendance Page
Fig 7: This bar graph indicates the present and absent data
of the student, the orange bar indicates the absent data and the
blue bar indicates the present data of the student.
University",2015 International Conference on Green Computing and
Internet of Things (ICGCloT).
[2] A. Gluhak, S. Krco, M. Nati, D. Pfisterer, N. Mitton, and T.
Razafindralambo, “A Survey on Facilities for Experimental Internet of
Things Research,” IEEE Commun Mag. vol. 49, 2011, pp. 58-67.
[3] Andrea Zanella, Senior Member, IEEE, Nicola Bui, Angelo Castellani,
Lorenzo Vangelista, Senior Member, IEEE, Michele Zorzi,
Fellow,IEEE,” Internet of Things for Smart Cities,”IEEE Internet of
Things journal,vol.1no.1feb.2014.
[4] Hema Subramaniam, Marina Hassan, Setyawan Widyarto, "Bar Code
Scanner Based Student Attendance System (SAS)", Jurnal TICOM
Vol.1 No.3 Mei ,2013.
[5] Sumita Nainan, , Romin Parekh, Tanvi Shah," RFID Technology Based
Attendance Management System", IJCSI International Journal of
Computer Science Issues, Vol. 10, Issue 1, No 1, January 2013.
[6] Garima Jain and Sanjeet Dahiya, NFC: ADVANTAGES, LIMITS AND
FUTURE SCOPE ,International Journal on Cybernetics & Informatics
(IJCI) Vol. 4, No. 4, August 2015.
[7] Mi-Young Bae and Dae-Jea Cho," Design and Implementation of
Automatic Attendance Check System Using BLE Beacon",International
Journal of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering Vol.10, No.10
(2015), pp.177-186.
[8] Shota Noguchi Michitoshi Niibori Erjing Zhou, Masaru Kamada”
StudentAttendanceManagementSystemwithBluetoothLowEnergyBeacon
and AndroidDevices,” 2015 18th International Conference on Network-
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[9] Mi-Young Bae and Dae-Jea Cho,” Design and Implementation of
Automatic Attendance Check System Using BLE Beacon”, International
Journal of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering.

Fig. 7: Graphical Representation of Attendance

V. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we have proposed a Bluetooth Low Energy

based Beacon attendance system, in which the student can
submit their attendance via android devices that reduces the
time consumption and fraud attendance compared to the
traditional hand written approach and other recent RFID,
NFC, Barcode, Biometric methods. The system can be
improved in future by implementing it on other operating
system like Windows and iOS. As a case study, the student
attendance in lecture is implemented and tested. The same
technology can be used in various other applications such as
banking services, museum, restaurants, retail stores etc.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to sincerely thank the authorities of
Supercomputer Education and Research Center, Indian
Institute of Science, Bangalore for their encouragement and
support. The authors would also like to thank faculty and
management of Vijaya Vittala Institute of Technology,
Bangalore for their valuable guidance.

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