U.S. "smart lighting" project to lock based on LED optical transmission of wireless networks

A smart lighting initiative sponsored by the U.S. government to explore the wireless communications capabilities embedded in the future of LED lighting installation, in order to provide a wider access point.

The investment of $one hundred and eighty-five million, for a period of 10 years, the National Science Foundation project involving researchers, more than 30 universities, including Boston University, located in New York's RenssELaer Institute of technology and University of New Mexico in the American state of New Mexico central city.

The initiative explores the use of visible beams to achieve communication between a radio device and a LED based lighting device. The LED based scheme can also be used to communicate between the increasing number of vehicles in LED applications. The goal is to build communication capabilities in all LED lighting, while reducing the congestion of the RF band.

"The use of infrared communication has a long history, the infrared data association IRDA years ago as PDA, printer and notebook computer to build a communication protocol," Boston University professor Thomas Little said. "What we are doing now is to seize this opportunity to embed networking features into the LED lighting revolution. As incandescent and fluorescent lamps are replaced, we want to embed networking technology in LED lighting. "

At present, the use of infrared LED, LED based communication functions, such as remote control function, will be suitable for the use of visible light, in order to facilitate the transceiver in digital devices to communicate with the lighting equipment. These lighting devices will access the Internet via a wired device. Unlike the WiFi based access points that must be shared among all users, the RF based access to visible light may allow different data streams to be fed into each device.

The experiments have been carried out for different modulation schemes, including standard binary coding, non return to zero encoder, pulse code modulation and pulse width modulation. They claimed that these programs as long as the data rate is higher than 900 KHz, each of which can not work in the case of light flicker.

The prototype will be shown next year at a speed of 1-10Mbits per second, which will use the latest LED and light emitting diodes to handle the transmit and receive functions. The researchers also plan to develop a new semiconductor technology that can eventually be made into visible light transceivers.

"As a part of the system, we need the receiver usually uses the light emitting diode, a scheme is used with the" anti bias of the LED one, and in effect, as a part of the manufacturing process, so that a part of LED as the receiver, and the other part as a the transmitter, "said Little.

The team will also use a variety of light waves to test the use of white light to form a variety of different colors of the data stream coding. Optical polarization will also be the focus of the use of visible light for multi communication strategy.

Boston University will focus on system level issues, including the development of computer networking applications. The development of semiconductor devices will be addressed by researchers at the Rensselaer Institute of technology and University of New Mexico.

Boston University has established a website on the intelligent lighting transmission initiative.

Source: power system