Ricerc@Sapienza

Visible Light communication (VLC) is an emerging technology in which data are transmitted by using ordinary LEDs as those available on lighting infrastructure or screen displays. In lighting systems the broad adoption of LEDs creates the opportunity of having a network of Internet connected LEDs, from which an end user with, for instance, a smartphone can receive location-aware information from the lighting infrastructure.
Starting from a previous project on VLC, here we investigate VLC modulation techniques compatible with a broad range of cameras, which can differ for the image acquisition method and the frame per second rate used, improving the achievable data rate without compromise the coexistence with the lighting infrastructure. The issue of wide compatibility with existing hardware is of fundamental importance as said by the IEEE task group on optical wireless communication dealing with revision of VLC standard.
Furthermore we want to create a network of transmitting LEDs connected to the Internet through a low power wide area network (LPWAN) protocol (as LoRaWAN), in order to have smart lighting and control the VLC transmitter parameters. The studies on VLC integration with the core network are important to be addressed, because in the VLC literature most works deal with point-to-point systems, and there is a lack on networking aspects that are fundamental in order to have a full communication system.
This objectives are reached using the output of a previous project, where a test-bed for point-to-point VLC communication has been established, enhancing it with low cost hardware, creating a LPWAN using the LoRaWAN network recently deployed in Rome, in order to have a complete framework of VLC communication where LEDs are remotely controlled.