Visible light communications: a new green wireless network opportunity?

Nicolas Krommenacker (1) , Miguel Alfaro (2) , Ismael Soto (3) , Oscar Carlos Vasquez Perez (2)

1 CRAN - Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy
2 Departamento de Ingenieria Industrial - USACH
3 DIE - Departamento de Ingenieria Eléctrica

Visible Light Communications (VLC) is an emerging technology using LEDs for simultaneous illumination and data communications. In recent years the international IEEE 802.15.7 standard has been accepted and VLC solution may be expected to replace traditional wireless communication systems in lot of applications. At the same time, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry is focusing on the concept of Green ICT to reduce the carbon footprint generated by their ICT systems. The objective of this paper is to study the “green impact” of wireless communication systems based on Visible Light Technology. For that purpose, we propose an analysis according to the three sustainability dimensions: ecology, economics and ethics. We will also discuss about the network performance. To finish, a simple case study will be presented to evaluate and compare the energy consumption of a VLC network compared to a Wi-Fi solution combined with fluorescent lighting.

Mots clés: Visible Light Communications; Green Wireless Networks; Energy Efficiency

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication

Nicolas Krommenacker, Miguel Alfaro, Ismael Soto, Oscar Carlos Vasquez Perez. Visible light communications: a new green wireless network opportunity?. 10ème Conférence Francophone de Modélisation, Optimisation et Simulation, MOSIM'14, Nov 2014, Nancy, France. ⟨hal-01093208⟩