Illumination sensing in LED lighting systems based on frequency-division multiplexing

Recently, light emitting diode (LED) based illumination systems have attracted considerable research interest. Such systems normally consist of a large number of LEDs. In order to facilitate the control of such high-complexity system, a novel signal processing application, namely illumination sensing, is thus studied. In this paper, the system concept and research challenges of illumination sensing are presented. Thereafter, we investigate a frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) scheme to distinguish the signals from different LEDs, such that we are able to estimate the illuminances of all the LEDs simultaneously. Moreover, a filter bank sensor structure is proposed to study the key properties of the FDM scheme. Conditions on the design of the filter response are imposed for the ideal case without the existence of any frequency inaccuracy, as well as for the case with frequency inaccuracies. The maximum number of LEDs that can be supported for each case is also derived. In particular, it is shown that, among all the other considered functions, the use of the triangular function is able to give a better tradeoff between the number of LEDs that can be supported and the allowable clock inaccuracies within a practical range. Moreover, through numerical investigations, we show that many tens of LEDs can be supported for the considered system parameters. Remark on the low-cost implementations of the proposed sensor structure is also provided

A Survey of Positioning Systems Using Visible LED Lights

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.As Global Positioning System (GPS) cannot provide satisfying performance in indoor environments, indoor positioning technology, which utilizes indoor wireless signals instead of GPS signals, has grown rapidly in recent years. Meanwhile, visible light communication (VLC) using light devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been deemed to be a promising candidate in the heterogeneous wireless networks that may collaborate with radio frequencies (RF) wireless networks. In particular, light-fidelity has a great potential for deployment in future indoor environments because of its high throughput and security advantages. This paper provides a comprehensive study of a novel positioning technology based on visible white LED lights, which has attracted much attention from both academia and industry. The essential characteristics and principles of this system are deeply discussed, and relevant positioning algorithms and designs are classified and elaborated. This paper undertakes a thorough investigation into current LED-based indoor positioning systems and compares their performance through many aspects, such as test environment, accuracy, and cost. It presents indoor hybrid positioning systems among VLC and other systems (e.g., inertial sensors and RF systems). We also review and classify outdoor VLC positioning applications for the first time. Finally, this paper surveys major advances as well as open issues, challenges, and future research directions in VLC positioning systems.Peer reviewe

A two phase framework for visible light-based positioning in an indoor environment: performance, latency, and illumination

Recently with the advancement of solid state lighting and the application thereof to Visible Light Communications (VLC), the concept of Visible Light Positioning (VLP) has been targeted as a very attractive indoor positioning system (IPS) due to its ubiquity, directionality, spatial reuse, and relatively high modulation bandwidth. IPSs, in general, have 4 major components (1) a modulation, (2) a multiple access scheme, (3) a channel measurement, and (4) a positioning algorithm. A number of VLP approaches have been proposed in the literature and primarily focus on a fixed combination of these elements and moreover evaluate the quality of the contribution often by accuracy or precision alone. In this dissertation, we provide a novel two-phase indoor positioning algorithmic framework that is able to increase robustness when subject to insufficient anchor luminaries and also incorporate any combination of the four major IPS components. The first phase provides robust and timely albeit less accurate positioning proximity estimates without requiring more than a single luminary anchor using time division access to On Off Keying (OOK) modulated signals while the second phase provides a more accurate, conventional, positioning estimate approach using a novel geometric constrained triangulation algorithm based on angle of arrival (AoA) measurements. However, this approach is still an application of a specific combination of IPS components. To achieve a broader impact, the framework is employed on a collection of IPS component combinations ranging from (1) pulsed modulations to multicarrier modulations, (2) time, frequency, and code division multiple access, (3) received signal strength (RSS), time of flight (ToF), and AoA, as well as (4) trilateration and triangulation positioning algorithms. Results illustrate full room positioning coverage ranging with median accuracies ranging from 3.09 cm to 12.07 cm at 50% duty cycle illumination levels. The framework further allows for duty cycle variation to include dimming modulations and results range from 3.62 cm to 13.15 cm at 20% duty cycle while 2.06 cm to 8.44 cm at a 78% duty cycle. Testbed results reinforce this frameworks applicability. Lastly, a novel latency constrained optimization algorithm can be overlaid on the two phase framework to decide when to simply use the coarse estimate or when to expend more computational resources on a potentially more accurate fine estimate. The creation of the two phase framework enables robust, illumination, latency sensitive positioning with the ability to be applied within a vast array of system deployment constraints

Building a Bidirectional Visible Light Communication Link: Challenges and Contributions

Visible Light Communication is a new information transmission method that involves sending data through light emitting diodes and photo-diodes via the visible light spectrum. It has strong applications in improving security for IoT (Internet of Things) devices. This paper describes a hardware-first approach to building a visible light communication (VLC) link. A VLC link was designed by choosing the simplest possible circuit and software and then incrementally improving it as challenges such as ambient lighting noise and data rate limitations were encountered. This link was used with two main communication protocols: On-off keying (OOK), and Frequency-Shift Keying. The paper describes a design for a fast, robust system using both protocols that also allows for an adjustable data rate. Because many issues were encountered along the way, the paper presents several possible sources of noise and data rate limitations and how to remove this noise and limitations. Finally, the paper also describes extensions to the design to make it bidirectional, more robust, and faster.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Visible Light Communications towards 5G

5G networks have to offer extremely high capacity for novel streaming applications. One of the most promising approaches is to embed large numbers of co-operating small cells into the macro-cell coverage area. Alternatively, optical wireless based technologies can be adopted as an alternative physical layer offering higher data rates. Visible light communications (VLC) is an emerging technology for future high capacity communication links (it has been accepted to 5GPP) in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum (~370–780 nm) utilizing light-emitting diodes (LEDs) simultaneously provide data transmission and room illumination. A major challenge in VLC is the LED modulation bandwidths, which are limited to a few MHz. However, myriad gigabit speed transmission links have already been demonstrated. Non line-of-sight (NLOS) optical wireless is resistant to blocking by people and obstacles and is capable of adapting its’ throughput according to the current channel state information. Concurrently, organic polymer LEDs (PLEDs) have become the focus of enormous attention for solid-state lighting applications due to their advantages over conventional white LEDs such as ultra-low costs, low heating temperature, mechanical flexibility and large photoactive areas when produced with wet processing methods. This paper discusses development of such VLC links with a view to implementing ubiquitous broadcasting networks featuring advanced modulation formats such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) or carrier-less amplitude and phase modulation (CAP) in conjunction with equalization techniques. Finally, this paper will also summarize the results of the European project ICT COST IC1101 OPTICWISE (Optical Wireless Communications - An Emerging Technology) dealing VLC and OLEDs towards 5G networks