Abstract
With the advent of high efficacy light emitting diode directional lamps as a key component in focal lighting, new possibilities emerge for re-designing the smart home scenario. A smart home scenario is characterized by enabled intelligent interworking of various wireless and wired technologies to provide inhabitants with ease of use of appliances, while creating a personalized and safe ambience space. More and more high and low data rate circulates within the indoor ambient space (e.g., home, hospitals, offices). Although, unlicensed technologies, such as wireless local area networks can take upon part of the indoor traffic, the ever increasing demand for such data, and users, calls for either use of licensed or novel unlicensed wireless communication technologies as part of the smart home enablers. This paper focuses on the potentials of visible light communications (VLCs), jointly with radio and fiber communications, to support very dense low and high data rate connectivity, while enabling deployment of secure-sensitive indoor applications, including indoor tracking and localization. The paper proposes a scenario for integrating VLC into the smart home scenario and a conceptual supporting architecture for its deployment. Further, the technical challenges and possible roadmap for the actual deployment are analyzed for the particular case of an eHealth scenario where the utilization of VLC technology is the enabler of the cost-efficient rollout of the required infrastructure and thus the game-changer in a multi-billion eHealth niche that is seeking for cost affordable solutions.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- VLC:
-
Visual light communication
- LRHCS:
-
Low rate high connectivity system
- LED:
-
Light emitting diodes
- PD:
-
Photo detector
References
Han, D.-M., & Lim, J.-H. (2010). Design and implementation of smart home energy management systems based on zigbee. IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, 56(3), 1417–1425. doi:10.1109/TCE.2010.5606278.
Ayub, S., Honary, M., Kariyawasam, S., & Honary, B. (2013). A practical approach of VLC architecture for smart city. In Antennas and propagation conference (LAPC), 2013 Loughborough (pp. 106, 111), 11–12 Nov 2013. doi:10.1109/LAPC.2013.6711862.
Peifer, D. (2010) LED lighting can enable smart homes and enhance lifestyles. LEDs Magazine, 7(4).
Wright, M. (2014) Philips lighting demonstrates LED-based indoor location detection technology. LED Magazine. http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2014/02/philips-lighting-demonstrates-led-based-indoor-location-detection-technology.html.
Wright, M. (2014). Samsung announces three LED families that target mobile device applications. LED Magazine. http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2014/02/samsung-announces-three-led-families-that-target-mobile-device-applications.html.
EU-funded FP7 ICT IP project eWALL. http://ewallproject.eu.
EU-funded PSP ICT project ISISEMD. http://www.isisemd.eu/.
European Commission. (2011). Radio spectrum policy: Flexibility, the key to competition and innovation. November 22, 2011, from http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/.
EU -funded FP7 ICT project OMEGA. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/.
Prasad, R., Mihovska, A., Cianca, E., & Mukherjee, S. (2012). Comparative overview of UWB and VLC for data-intensive and security-sensitive applications. In Proceedings of 2012 IEEE international conference on ultra-wideband (ICUWB), September 17–19, Syracuse, NY, USA.
Le Minh, H., Ghassemlooy, Z., O’Brien, D., & Faulkner, G. (2010). Indoor gigabit optical wireless communications: Challenges and possibilities. IEEE 12th international conference on transparent optical networks (ICTON) (pp. 1–6), Munich, Germany.
Langer, K.-D., Hilt, J., Shulz, D., Lassak, F., Hartlieb, F., Kottke, C., et al. (2013). Rate-adaptive visible light communication at 500 Mb/s arrives at plug and play. In SPIE optoelectronics and communications. 14 November 2013. SPIE Newsroom. doi:10.1117/2.1201311.005196.
Paraskevopoulos, A., Vučić, J., Kottke, C., Fernández, L., Habel, K., & Langer, K.-D. (2012). Optical wireless network built on white-light LEDs reaches 800 Mb/s. In 3 January 2012. SPIE Newsroom. doi:10.1117/2.1201111.003941.
Ashok, A., Gruteser, M., Mandayam, N., Kwon, T., Yuan, W., Varga, M., et al. (2011) Rate adaptation in visual MIMO, sensor, mesh and Ad Hoc communications and networks (SECON). 2011 8th annual IEEE communications society conference on (pp. 583,591), 27–30 June 2011. doi:10.1109/SAHCN.2011.5984946.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kumar, A., Mihovska, A., Kyriazakos, S. et al. Visible Light Communications (VLC) for Ambient Assisted Living. Wireless Pers Commun 78, 1699–1717 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-014-1901-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-014-1901-1