Visible Light Communications (VLC) for Ambient Assisted Living

• DOI: 10.1007/s11277-014-1901-1
• Publication Date: 2014-07-21T02:57:21Z
• Authors: Ambuj Kumar; Albena Mihovska; Sofoklis Kyriazakos; Ramjee Prasad
• Keywords: Enabling; eHealth

With the advent of high efficacy light emitting diode (LED) directional lamps as a key componentin focal lighting, new possibilities emerge for re-designing the smart home scenario. A smart homescenario is characterized by enabled intelligent interworking of various wireless and wiredtechnologies to provide inhabitants with ease of use of appliances, while creating a personalized andsafe ambience space. More and more high and low data rate circulates within the indoor ambientspace (e.g., home, hospitals, offices). Although, unlicensed technologies, such as wireless local areanetworks (WLANs) can take upon part of the indoor traffic, the ever increasing demand for suchdata, and users, calls for either use of licensed or novel unlicensed wireless communicationtechnologies as part of the smart home enablers. This paper focuses on the potentials of visible lightcommunications (VLC), jointly with radio and fiber communications, to support very dense low andhigh data rate connectivity, while enabling deployment of secure-sensitive indoor applications,including indoor tracking and localization. The paper proposes a scenario for integrating VLC intothe smart home scenario and a conceptual supporting architecture for its deployment. Further, thetechnical challenges and possible roadmap for the actual deployment are analyzed for the particularcase of an eHealth scenario where the utilization of VLC technology is the enabler of the costefficientrollout of the required infrastructure and thus the game-changer in a multi-billion eHealthniche that is seeking for cost affordable solutions.