Co-design of Smart Lighting and Communication for Visible Light Networks

Visible Light Communication has been intriguing both the industry and the academia for over a decade. However, most of the research efforts in this area only consider scenarios where the light emitted from the transmitters is constant. This is not true when Smart Lighting, a technology designed for more comfortable and energy efficient buildings by adjusting the illumination of fixtures based on ambient light availability, is involved. Under the smart lighting, the changes of fixtures’ illumination affect the communication links significantly. Therefore, new methods must be proposed for a revolutionary co-design of smart lighting and communication for the visible light networks. This project proposes SmartVLC, a system that can optimize the throughput (benefit communication) while maintaining the LEDs’ primary illumination function (benefit smart lighting). A new modulation scheme Adaptive Multiple Pulse Position Modulation (AMPPM) is proposed to support finegrained dimming levels and optimize the throughput under each dimming level via pattern multiplexing. An algorithm is also designed to adjust the LEDs’ dimming level smoothly. The proposed AMPPM and the LEDs’ illumination adaptation algorithm are implemented into a low-cost platform. The performance of SmartVLC is evaluated under both static and dynamic scenarios. The current version of SmartVLC supports a communication distance of 3.6 m and a throughput of 107 Kbps in an indoor environment. Compared to state-of-the-art solutions, the performance gain of SmartVLC can reach up to 190%. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication