Survey on iBeacon Based Smart Attendance
Monitoring and Management System
Shubham Jain, Shraddha Kannurkar, Shweta Kale
shubhamujain@gmail.com, shraddhak0697@gmail.com, shwetakale29@gmail.com
Department of Computer Engineering
AISSMS IOIT, Pune-01.
Abstract
Attendance is the term which means appearing at or
being present at the desired location. Attendance can
be of anything like the attendance in function,
attendance in schools, attendance of students in
colleges or the attendance of employees at their work
place. The attendance can be marked in many ways.
It can be marked through pen and paper, or many of
the technologies like the barcode, biometric, RFID
etc. All these technologies uses the near range and
accordingly marks the attendance once the barcode
comes in contact with the barcode scanner, or
whenever the fingerprint is scanned through the
biometric device, or the RFID tag flashes on the
RFID reader respectively. But taking into
consideration the drawbacks of all these systems we
are proposing the system which uses the new
technology as iBeacon. It reduces the time of
marking attendance in all the ways. The main aim is
to build the green and fast India.
Introduction
Nowadays, individuals’ attendance has become an
important evaluation aspect in every sector such as
schools, colleges, workplaces etc. Generally the
attendance is marked using many technologies as
RFID, Biometric, Barcode, online attendance system
etc. A brief introduction of various technologies
mentioned above is discussed as follows:
1. RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification): RFID is a
wireless technology which consists of the RFID
reader and RFID tag which has electromagnetic
waves to collect the stored information automatically.
Active, Passive and Semi-Passive tags are the three
major types of RFID tags. RFID is uniquely
identified as well as traced. To mark the attendance,
RFID tag should be flashed on the RFID reader in
order to confirm unique identity. Once the unique
RFID tag is matched with the saved data in the
database.
Volume: 3 Issue: 2 April - 2018
2. Biometric: The Biometric System is based on
fingerprints, iris, and facial gestures etc. which are
unique for every individual and are stored in the
database. When an individual scans his fingerprint on
or face in front of the Biometric device, it checks
with the database in order to confirm the identity of
an individual. The attendance of the person is marked
automatically as soon as the fingerprint or face
matches with the database.
3. Online Attendance System: The online Attendance
System requires an active Internet Connection to
mark the attendance. When an individual who has to
mark the attendance comes in the range of that Wi-Fi
modem or router, it gets connected to that device and
the attendance is marked.
4. Barcode: A Barcode is a machine-readable
representation of information in a visual format. A
barcode consists of parallel, adjacent bars and spaces.
In Barcode based Attendance System, a barcode is at
the backside of individuals ID card. This barcode
consist of unique data of an individual such as name,
roll number, branch and year etc. A person can scan
his/her barcode to mark the attendance.
By taking into consideration the drawbacks of all
these systems such as wastage of time in marking the
attendance, use of internet connection, human
intervention, less efficiency etc. we are proposing the
system which is based on the iBeacon technology
which works on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).
iBeacon Technology: This technology was developed
by Apple in 2013. It is based on BLE. BLE is
wireless personal area network technology which is
also known as Bluetooth Smart. iBeacon has given
mobile application the ability to understand the
position where they actually are on micro-local scale
and gives the content to receiver which is based on
the location. The two simple things are required for
the communication of iBeacon and they are:
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 a) A broadcaster(Bluetooth based iBeacon
device) and
b) A receiver(Android/iOS device with an app)
The Broadcaster is continuously broadcasting the
signals, as soon as the receiver comes in the
immediate proximity, it receives the signal and
responds accordingly.
Literature Survey
Jeongyeup Paek, et al [1] proposed “Geometric
Adjustment Scheme for Indoor Location-Based
Mobile Applications”. The original goal of this
research was to develop an improved Indoor
positioning system using iBeacon technologies. The
advantage of this system is that it allows a mobile
device to detect its proximity to an iBeacon station
(and possibly its location) by knowing how close it is
to (usually wall-mounted) low complexity, low-cost
BLE transmitters, the iBeacons.
Germ‘an H. Flores, et al [2] proposed “An iBeacon
Training App for Indoor Fingerprinting”. They have
introduced a novel approach to streamline the process
of collecting training data for the fingerprinting
indoor localization technique. The training data can
be collected from a Bluetooth-enabled iOS client
device and requires no complex graphical maps since
we only need the x-y location where the iBeacon
training data was collected. The disadvantage is the
app is not universally compatible.
Md Sayedul Aman, et al [3] proposed “Reliability
Evaluation of iBeacon for Micro-Localization”. This
paper shows the implementation through RSSI
values. The distance versus RSSI data was plotted to
show the unexpected behavior of RSSI for distance
less than 2m. The advantage is that the algorithm
which is used requires very simple approach.
Zhenghua Chen, et al [4] proposed “Smartphone
Inertial Sensor Based Indoor Localization and
Tracking with iBeacon Corrections”. The position
estimated by WiFi fingerprinting based approach is
fused with PDR to reduce its drifting error. The
advantage of the system utilize both gyroscope
and magnetometer to estimate the walking direction
of user and it is more power efficient. The
Volume: 3 Issue: 2 April - 2018
Fig.1 iBeacon
disadvantage of system is that the actual location of
each iBeacon is not known, it has to be assumed.
Mr. Sehul A. Thakkar, et al [5] proposed “an
iBeacon: Newly Emerged Technology for Positioning
and Tracking in Indoor Place”. The importance of
iBeacon technology is that it is used for indoor
positioning and tracking. It is used to track the
location of a person. For instance, it can be used to
locate and track any valuable asset, where it is
actually located and where it moves from one place
to other place.
Rahul More, et al [6] proposed a RFID based student
attendance monitoring system. Initially, students’
partial attendance is marked as student swap the I-
card on RFID reader. Then teacher login for the
lecture with lecture ID, and OTP is given to students
by orally or written, after entering this OTP into their
android mobile and the student attendance is marked
completely. The advantage of this system is to solve
the attendance problem and get the information of
students at any time and limitation of the system is
that it requires human intervention and it is also time-
consuming.
Srinidhi MB, et al [7] proposed a “Web enabled
secured system for attendance monitoring and real
time location tracking using Biometric and radio
frequency identification (RFID) technology”. The
regularity of the child will be informed to parents
through the SMS services. The main advantage is that
the graph is generated which gives the information
about the regularity of student. But the disadvantage
of this system is that it requires the hardware devices
like RFID, Biometric which increases the cost.
Vishal Bhalla, et al [8] has proposed Bluetooth Based
Attendance Management System. In the proposed
system, the staff’s mobile is used for taking the
attendance. The technology used is Bluetooth which
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works in the range of approximately 10m. In this
paper it is used to connect the devices to the staff’s
mobile phone by using the Bluetooth. On connecting
we can find whether the particular student is present
in class or not. The problem in the proposed system is
student's phone is required for attendance.
Josphineleela.R, et al [9] proposed “An Efficient
Automatic Attendance System using Fingerprint
Reconstruction Technique”. This system can be used
by the entire college like staff and students even
administrator as well. It works on the Biometric. The
following system takes the input as fingerprint which
is always persistent and accordingly it marks the
attendance. The disadvantage of this system is that it
consumes lot of time in marking the attendance.

Technologies
Parameters RFID [7] Barcode NFC Bluetooth[8]

Range Minimum Long range Approx. up to Approx. 100m

distance barcode scanner greater than or 320 feet for
over that enables 20 cm class 1
1Meter or them to read 1D,
3 feet 2D barcode up to
50 feet

Frequency 125 or 135 -------- 2483.5mHz 13.56mHz

MHz
Cost 499 250 599 4090
Data rate 4008 kbps --------- 24mbits 42 kbps

IEEE 802.15 ---------- 802.15 802.15.1

standard

pitfalls like wastage of time in marking the

Conclusion attendance, use of internet connection, human
In this paper, smart attendance monitoring and
intervention, less efficiency etc. therefore to
management system has been proposed. In the past,
overcome all the pitfalls in all these technologies we
attendance monitoring systems have been developed
are proposing smart attendance monitoring system
using various technologies like RFID, Barcode,
which is based on iBeacon and which will overcome
Biometric etc. but all these technologies have certain
all the drawbacks. It will also be helpful in detecting
the fake attendance.

References

Volume: 3 Issue: 2 April - 2018 76

[1] Jeongyeup Paek, JeongGil Ko and Hyungsik [10]https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/col
Shin, "A Measurement Study of BLE iBeacon and lateral/enterprise-networks/connected-mobile-
Geometric Adjustment Scheme for Indoor Location- experiences/ibeacon_faq.pdf
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Estimote-Beacons-and-Stickers
[2] Germ´an H. Flores, Thomas D. Griffin, Divyesh
Jadav, "An iBeacon Training App for Indoor [12]
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[3] Md Sayedul Aman, Haowen Jiang, Cuyler Quint,
Kumar Yelamarthi, Ahmed Abdelgawad, "Reliability
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1-5090-1496-5/16/$31.00 © 2016 IEEE.

[4] Zhenghua Chen, Qingchang Zhu, and Yeng Chai

Soh, "Smartphone Inertial Sensor Based Indoor
Localization and Tracking with iBeacon
Corrections", DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2579265, IEEE
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[5] Mr. Sehul A. Thakkar, Mr. Sunil Patel, Mr.

Brijesh Kamani, "iBeacon: Newly Emerged
Technology for Positioning and Tracking in Indoor
Place", IJARCCE, Vol. 5, Issue 3, March 2016.
[6] Rahul More, Kiran Patel, Rhutika Tavasalkar,
Yogita Khandagale, Prof. A. R. Uttarkar, "Student
Attendance system and Monitoring using RFID and
Processing", IERJ, Volume 2 Issue 2 Page 402-406,
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[7] Srinidhi MB, Romil Roy, "A Web Enabled

Secured System for Attendance Monitoring and Real
Time Location Tracking Using Biometric and Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology", 2015
International Conference on Computer
Communication and Informatics (ICCCI -2015), Jan.
08 – 10, 2015, Coimbatore, INDIA.
[8] Vishal Bhalla, Tapodhan Singla, Ankit Gahlot,
Vijay Gupta, "Bluetooth Based Attendance
Management System", IJIET-2013, Vol. 3 Issue 1
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[9] Josphineleela.R, Dr.M.Ramakrishan, "An
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