Deployment methods of visible light communication lights for energy efficient buildings

Abstract

Indoor visible light communication (VLC) uses light emitting diodes (LEDs) to provide both illumination and data communication. The deployment of LED plays an important role in maintaining a steady optical power distribution over the reference receiving plane. Typical ways of luminaire deployment in offices and homes are not optimized for VLC. This paper investigates various configurations of LEDs for deploying them on the ceilings of offices and homes. The existing square array deployment of LEDs does not provide a full coverage on the receiving plane leaving dead spaces, which in turn affects the performance of the whole system. An optimized circular deployment scheme is proposed that considers both the position of the LED transmitters on the ceiling and the first reflections at each wall to yield more accurate results. Rectangular deployment and circular deployment are analyzed through simulation of the received optical power distribution, average outage area rate, and energy consumption. An optimization technique is developed to analyze the LED deployment schemes. It is clear from the results that the circular LED deployment provides a better performance than the square array grid LED deployment. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)