Wireless Connectivity

A Wireless Network Based on Visible Light

Researchers at several educational institutions are working on a next-generation wireless communications technology that's based on visible light rather than radio waves. The Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of New Mexico (UNM) researchers want to piggyback data communications capabilities onto low-power light emitting diodes (LEDs) in order to create "Smart Lighting" that would be both faster and more secure than current network technology. The project promises to make an LED device the equivalent of a WiFi access point.

"Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster of wires," says Thomas Little, a Boston University engineering professor. "This could be done with an LED-based communications network that also provides light--all over existing power lines with low power consumption, high reliability and no electromagnetic interference."

The researchers are developing smart lighting devices and systems applications, as well as the various materials needed for wireless devices to interface with a network. Boston University's research efforts will focus on developing networking applications, notably the solid-state optical technology that will form the network's backbone. The three partners combined will have 30 faculty researchers plus students, postdoctoral researchers and visiting industry engineers working as regular contributors.

"This is a unique opportunity to create a transcendent technology that not only enables energy efficient lighting, but also creates the next generation of secure wireless communications," Little says. "As we switch from incandescent and compact florescent lighting to LEDs in the coming years, we can simultaneously build a faster and more secure communications infrastructure at a modest cost along with new and unexpected applications."

Little envisions the creation of indoor optical wireless communications systems that use white LED lighting within a room to provide Internet connections to computers, ordinary and mobile smart phones, TVs, radios and thermostats. With widespread LED lighting, a vast network of light-based communication is possible, Little states. A wireless device within sight of an enabled LED could send and receive data though the air--initially at speeds in the 1 to 10 megabit per second range--with each LED serving as an access point to the network.

"The innovative LED-based networking research ... has the potential to be extremely positive and disruptive to the market," says Inder Monga, a project leader in advanced networking research at Nortel. "Nortel believes the era of hyperconnectivity is upon us and the potential new applications that this visible light-based networking could enable with its energy efficient qualities, privacy and its ubiquitous nature is very exciting."

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