How Does Bluetooth 4.0 Work in the Context of Retail Beacons?

[bhaazee]

Hi everyone,
I would like to know how the BLE functions in more detailed manner.

Consider the case of BLE beacons at the local retail outlet. I am notified of a offer when passing through the outlet. The offer may be a text based or a image based. I presume the merchant sends me a generic offer when his beacon detects my BLE on my smartphone.

Now, is this offer sent via the merchant's BLE to my BLE
or
sent by merchant through the internet to my smartphone?

If the image is sent via BLE, how is it possible? (aren't BLE supposed for small data transmissions?)

Firstly, how a beacon sends a promo? Will it have images stores in them or the beacon itself is connected to merchant's pos device to transfer promo from the pos through the beacon to the customer's smartphone

Now, are all the activities that's done using a BLE beacon, is also possible using a wireless usb module using BLE? I mean can a BLE usb module be used for determining the proximity of a smartphone just like what the BLE beacon does?

Would be great if someone can answer my queries.

Regards

 

[UltrafastPED]

This should help your analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon

 

[bhaazee]

Hi UltrafastPED,
That link have cleared many of my queries. Thanks for the link. I have few more doubts.

The slave (here the beacon) sends only a UUI (Universally Unique Identifier) to the master (here the shopper). Of course, the shopper may ignore the notification or perform some action. Now does sending the UUI to the master needs pairing, because UUI is similar to IP address as I believe.

 

[WallaceCox]

You can try to find information from www.bluetooth.com/