Generation of Thumbnail Images of Multimedia Data for Exchange via BLE

SHONAN is a system of harmonizing human capabilities and information technology to facilitate communication. The narrow area communication system (NAMI) is a specific application of SHONAN that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to share text-based information within a confined geographic area. However, this technology makes it difficult to exchange large amounts of data, so Wi-Fi technology has previously been used to exchange multimedia data such as photos and videos via NAMI. This study presents a method for the exchange of multimedia data using only BLE, which involves generating and transferring thumbnail images with a reduced file size. The proposed method was implemented on NAMI, and the compression rate and file size of the thumbnail images were investigated. The results indicated that thumbnail images could be exchanged using only BLE at a practical transfer speed.