BeTwin: Enhancing VR Experiences with BLE Beacon-based Digital Twins

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the technologies that can be used for short-range communications. BLE beacons are small wireless devices that can store URLs and real-world data, including GPS locations and identifiers. This article proposes BeTwin, an efficient solution that integrates BLE beacons with a digital twin environment in order to enhance and customise a virtual 3D platform, bridging the real and virtual worlds. The beacons are used to bring information from real objects into the virtual platform. We extend the Eddystone messaging protocol and investigate the impact of beacon distance, energy levels, and number of beacons on the system performance. We also describe a testbed consisting of a virtual environment, a beacon reader along with beacons, and assess its performance in terms of communications latency, Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), and number of beacons.