Managing large scale, ultra-dense beacon deployments in smart campuses

The demand for proximity-based services for mobile device users inside smart buildings has driven a surge in the installation of large-scale, ultradense Bluetooth Low Energy beacon deployments. But managing a large-scale beacon infrastructure presents new systems challenges, including managing battery life, replacing misplaced or stolen beacons, detecting and locating foreign or malicious beacons, and engineering beacon locations to optimize wireless resources. We study two problems whose solutions facilitate large-scale beacon network management. First, we develop a prototype system to demonstrate how conventionally static beacon advertisements can be made time-varying, and argue that time-varying advertisements can convey important device health and network state information. We then consider a fundamental question in site engineering; calculating upper limits on the spatial density of deployed beacons to optimize either the number of advertisements received, or mobile users reached. Using analysis and simulation, we show that with current wireless standards beacon separation should be at least 0.5 meters per advertisement channel. Knowledge of this bound facilitates the construction of topology design rules, and quantifies previously unknown limits on beacon density in ultra-dense deployments.