Abstract Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology has opened a whole new dimension of single-hop wireless communication technology due to its inexpensive and low-power properties. This technology makes it possible for a large number of devices to be connected to the Internet of Things. The BLE mechanism is clearly defined by the standard, however, there is room for improvements in some aspects of the technology such as the discovery process. Although the discovery process of traditional Bluetooth architecture has been intensively investigated through analytical and simulation models over the years, it cannot be applied to the BLE technology because of many changes introduced in the design of the BLE. Recently, there have been several works for performance evaluation of BLE discovery process, but they are not still thorough enough in providing a holistic analysis of the BLE. This has motivated our study for more accurate modeling of the BLE discovery process. Our work focuses on developing an analytical model and carrying out intensive simulations to investigate discovery probability and quantitative examination of the influence of parameter settings on the discovery latency and the energy performance metric of the discovery process.