Let assume this scenario: we add a ble beacon device to each suitcase. Is it possible to count how many suitcases are in the range of bluetooth? There is a physical limit to the numbers of blue device detected by a reader? Thanks, Luca.
At the moment I'm not able to verify the maximum number of ble beacon device.
There is no hard limit to the number of Bluetooth LE beacon advertisers that can be detected in the vicinity, but with extreme numbers the detection rate will slow down for each individual beacon.
For a real world example, consider a convention center where every person wears a badge with a beacon advertising a different identifier at 1 Hz. I have tested the scenario of an auditorium for the keynote speech with about 1000 beacons within range of a Samsung phone (even an older Galaxy S3) acting as the receiver.
In this scenario with a full auditorium, all 1000 beacons are detected every ~20 seconds. As people leave the auditorium and the number of beacons decreases, the detection rate increases until it gets close to the nominal 1Hz transmission rate of each beacon.
The main driver of the slower detection rate with an extreme number of beacons in the vicinity is radio congestion and collisions of multiple advertisements on the same radio channel.
Given that 1000 beacons in the vicinity still works in a degraded mode, and it is difficult to cram more beacons into the ~40 meter radio range of one receiver (unless you put them all in a big pile!) there is no practical limit provided your use case can accept slower detections.