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the user to have an application installed on his smart-
phone. Let us not forget that the beacon device ini-
tially can not collect BLE signals since it is a one-way
broadcasting technology.
To overcome such a static method of broadcasting
iBeacon BLE signal, in our previous work we have
proposed a dynamic solution where a modified BLE
beacon device can simultaneously transmit and re-
ceive different signals according to various user pro-
files (Boric et al., 2018), as well as the implementa-
tion part and the challenges (M. Boric et al., 2018).
By modified beacon, we refer to a device that in the
same moment can work in a scanning mode, and
an iBeacon mode (advertising specific information to
corresponding users) (Townsend et al., 2014). Ad-
ditionally, these two modes complement each other,
what allows the device to broadcast information to a
specific group of users that share the same profile.
The profile can be created manually by predefined
taxonomy, or automatically by users’ movement post
processing and detailed analytics. For this simultane-
ous broadcasting of information to different profiles,
the device needs to have a particular mechanism and
the background infrastructure that allows the profile
recognition and the broadcast. Now, we are expand-
ing that system with real-world examples to show its
usage and benefit for different purposes.
The recognition concept above could contribute
to solving the problem of manual presence detection
through automatically collecting users’ smartphones
BLE signals in any scenario environment where such
detection is required. To show the proof of concept we
utilize the mentioned system for collecting students’
lecture attendance in the academic environment. Our
scenario experiment took place at the Faculty of En-
gineering and Telecommunications of Vigo in Spain.
We have planted one beacon device in the hallway,
for testing the dynamic beacon broadcasting, and an-
other device in one of the classrooms of the Faculty
for collecting student attendance.
The experiment was conducted in a one-month pe-
riod, and we present the details in the following sec-
tions. In this work, we show how our dynamic sys-
tem can be used in the academic environment to au-
tomatically collect students lecture attendance when
students are in beacon proximity, without any appli-
cation installed on the user side. However, with the
application installed on the user side, a system may
eventually broadcast information to him, e.g., dif-
ferent events, classes timetable, homework, faculty
changes, and so on.
The remainder of this paper we divide into several
sections. Section 2 gives the related work and what
was our primary motivation. Part 3 explains the sys-
tem architecture and how we use it to for proposed
system. In section 4 we present the implementation
part with the results, wherein section 5 we conclude
the paper.
2 RELATED WORK
Researchers have been advancing in the Bluetooth
Low Energy field lately. This progress gave some
great examples of the use of such technology in to-
day’s world, from retail business (Shende et al., 2017)
and giving a better experience to the customers, to
monitoring different processes in industry or health
(Srinivasan et al., 2016) (Komai et al., 2016). When
speaking of beacon involvement in the academic en-
vironment, few projects have been proposed and de-
ployed. Researchers in (S. Barapatre et al., 2017)
have proposed the smart college management system
with the ability of automatic student class attendance.
However, for the system to be able to recognize a par-
ticular student, a student has to use an Android app
and to mark his attendance during a particular class.
Similarly, authors in (Apoorv and Mathur, 2016) have
built a system that facilitates the teachers to collect
student attendances. For this purpose, the Android ap-
plication communicates with the BLE beacon planted
in the classroom and collects the sensor data, from ID
cards, that matches the student’s attendance. How-
ever, to collect attendance, a teacher has to collect all
the BLE signals manually through the app.
Furthermore, authors in (Saraswat and Garg,
2016) are using beacons for faculty administrative
tasks and interacting with the students by sending
them Web links and the corresponding notifications.
Another feature of this system is the automatic stu-
dent attendance collection, where students according
to their stay in the classroom, during particular lec-
ture, get recorded by the system. That said, when the
specific student is near beacon a clock time starts in
the application background automatically and accord-
ing to its proximity (near, immediate), local clock-
time increases. However, the majority of the work is
done on the application side (student’s smartphone).
In our case, a dynamic beacon is the focal point of
all the processing that includes sending information
to the students, collecting their attendance, analyzing
their building usage and giving an insight to the fac-
ulty personnel.
Also, the reason for electing BLE technology is
because of its low power consumption, comparing to
Wi-Fi for instance (Putra et al., 2017). Also, Wi-Fi
technology asks for previously established connec-
tion between two hosts which is not convenient in our
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