Visible Light Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, VLC

Over the past decade, the use of op­ti­cal sig­nals in­stead of ra­dio sig­nals has gar­nered sig­nif­i­cant re­search and stan­dard­iza­tion in­ter­est. Love­field Wire­less has been in­stru­men­tal in find­ing low-cost ways to re­al­ize Vis­i­ble Light Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for wire­less net­work­ing.

Vis­i­ble Light Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (VLC) is a tech­nol­ogy that trans­mits data us­ing the vis­i­ble light spec­trum, typ­i­cally through rapidly mod­u­lat­ing LED lights be­yond hu­man per­cep­tual lim­its. As a branch of Op­ti­cal Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (OWC), VLC pro­vides high-speed data trans­fer while dou­bling as a light source. It of­fers ad­van­tages for ap­pli­ca­tions like in­door po­si­tion­ing, smart en­vi­ron­ment con­nec­tiv­ity, and se­cure com­mu­ni­ca­tions, given its con­fine­ment to il­lu­mi­nated ar­eas. VLC ad­dresses the grow­ing need for wire­less band­width with­out re­ly­ing on con­gested ra­dio fre­quen­cies.

The pre­vail­ing tra­jec­tory of in­creas­ing de­mand for wire­less data trans­mis­sion is set to ne­ces­si­tate the uti­liza­tion of presently un­tapped fre­quency bands within the elec­tro­mag­netic spec­trum, en­com­pass­ing the vis­i­ble light spec­trum (400 to 800 Ter­a­hertz). Vis­i­ble Light Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (VLC) in­ge­niously merges il­lu­mi­na­tion with data com­mu­ni­ca­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties. While the tech­nol­ogy it­self is not novel, sig­nif­i­cant progress in VLC re­search has al­ready been in­te­grated into com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dards, such as IEEE 802.11 Li-Fi and IEEE 802.15.7, demon­strat­ing its evolv­ing rel­e­vance and ap­pli­ca­tion in mod­ern wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion in­fra­struc­tures.

VLC em­bed­ded into Un­der­wa­ter Pool Lights

The In­ter­net of Things (IoT) fa­cil­i­tates the in­ter­con­nec­tiv­ity of sim­ple, low-com­plex­ity de­vices such as sen­sors, util­i­ties, and toys to a wide-area net­work, with many IoT de­vices re­quir­ing min­i­mal data trans­fer rates. An ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion in­fra­struc­ture de­signed to con­nect a vast ar­ray of de­vices should be cost-ef­fi­cient, un­ob­tru­sive, and ubiq­ui­tously avail­able. Vis­i­ble Light Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (VLC) emerges as a fa­vor­able op­tion due to its nu­mer­ous ad­van­ta­geous at­tributes, in­clud­ing the lack of reg­u­la­tory con­straints and its in­her­ent sim­plic­ity.

In the realm of un­der­wa­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion, VLC presents a com­pelling al­ter­na­tive to tra­di­tional ra­dio fre­quency (RF) based wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion, par­tic­u­larly in sce­nar­ios where ra­dio waves are im­prac­ti­cal. Notable ap­pli­ca­tions in­clude sub­ma­rine and swim­ming pool en­vi­ron­ments, which are piv­otal in ad­vanc­ing the de­vel­op­ment of an un­der­wa­ter In­ter­net of Things (IoT). Un­like ter­res­trial wire­less ra­dio com­mu­ni­ca­tions, un­der­wa­ter wire­less net­works face sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges due to the se­vere at­ten­u­a­tion of ra­dio sig­nals. In­frared sig­nals suf­fer more than those at shorter wave­lengths (higher fre­quen­cies), ex­plain­ing why un­der­wa­ter im­agery pre­dom­i­nantly fea­tures blue hues: blue light wave­lengths pen­e­trate wa­ter more ef­fec­tively than red or in­frared op­ti­cal sig­nals.

El­lip­tic Works from Southamp­ton, New York, USA, al­ready of­fers a world-class VLC plat­form so­lu­tion for con­sumer mar­kets.

In the con­text of sub­ma­rine com­mu­ni­ca­tions, un­manned ve­hi­cles tasked with mon­i­tor­ing and ex­plor­ing oceanic en­vi­ron­ments, such as Re­motely Oper­ated Ve­hi­cles (ROVs) and Au­tonomous Un­der­wa­ter Ve­hi­cles (AUVs), ne­ces­si­tate the ca­pa­bil­ity to trans­mit data over ex­tended dis­tances and at sub­stan­tial vol­umes. Wired con­nec­tions im­pede the mo­bil­ity of these de­vices, while ra­dio-based so­lu­tions of­fer only re­stricted range. Con­ven­tion­ally, most wire­less un­der­wa­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems rely on acous­tic waves, which are lim­ited to rel­a­tively low trans­mis­sion rates (in the or­der of hun­dreds of bits per sec­ond).

Un­der­wa­ter Vis­i­ble Light Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (UVLC) in­tro­duces the po­ten­tial for sig­nif­i­cantly higher data trans­mis­sion rates, reach­ing Me­gabits per sec­ond. In­ex­pen­sive con­sumer-grade UVLC sys­tems typ­i­cally em­ploy Light Emit­ting Diodes (LEDs) for this pur­pose. Al­ter­na­tively, laser diodes, which ne­ces­si­tate pre­cise align­ment with the re­ceiver, are uti­lized in more spe­cial­ized ap­pli­ca­tions, un­der­scor­ing the ver­sa­til­ity and en­hanced ca­pa­bil­i­ties of UVLC in un­der­wa­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Since 2020, Love­field Wire­less is mem­ber of the Euro­pean COST Ac­tion “NEWFOCUS”, which is a large re­search col­lab­o­ra­tion ef­fort to bring ex­perts work­ing on op­ti­cal wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion to­gether.

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