LIGHTNETs: Smart LIGHTing and Mobile Optical Wireless NETworks — A Survey

Abstract

Recently, rapid increase of mobile devices pushed the radio frequency (RF)-based wireless technologies to their limits. Free-space-optical (FSO), a.k.a. optical wireless, communication has been considered as one of the viable solutions to respond to the ever-increasing wireless capacity demand. Particularly, Visible Light Communication (VLC) which uses light emitting diode (LED) based smart lighting technology provides an opportunity and infrastructure for the high-speed low-cost wireless communication. Though stemming from the same core technology, the smart lighting and FSO communication have inherent tradeoffs amongst each other. In this paper, we present a tutorial and survey of advances in these two technologies and explore the potential for integration of the two as a single field of study: LIGHTNETs. We focus our survey to the context of mobile communications given the recent pressing needs in mobile wireless networking. We deliberate on key challenges involved in designing technologies jointly performing the two functions simultaneously: LIGHTing and NETworking.