2015 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE)

Smart Home Technologies using Visible Light Communication

Samrat Vikramaditya Tiwari, Atul Sewaiwar, and Yeon-Ho Chung

Dept. ofInformation & Comm. Eng., Pukyong National University, Korea
yhchung@pknu.ac.kr
Abstract-Smart home technologies using visible light data
transmission are presented. For multiple devices, orthogonal code
based

time

division

duplexed

bidirectional

Visible

Light

Communication (VLC) link is employed. The proposed model for

smart

home

performance,

is

an

subj ect

efficient
to

technology

locations

in

with

superior

typical

smart

BER
home

environment.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Technology is triggering a fundamental shift in the way we

live, the desire we pursue and expectations of what is possible.
In the context of Internet of Things (loT), smart home has
attracted much attention and is a promising technology for
increased comfort, safety and security. With smart home
technologies, household items, such as lamps, thermostats and
locks, are becoming connected wirelessly and smarter.
Presently, three main smart home technologies, Insteon [I],
ZigBee, [I] and Z-Wave [2], are vying for market share in the
wireless home automation space. All these technologies work
in radio frequency spectrum that is expeditiously congested
with increasing number of users or devices to support and also
highly susceptible to hacking.
As an alternative technology to congesting RF bands for a
short range communication, Visible Light Communication
(VLC) has been introduced [3]. VLC technology is one of the
advanced optical wireless communication technologies, in
which light in the visible region (375-780 nm in wavelength) is
used as a medium for data transmission. VLC is more secure
against hacking, as light cannot penetrate through walls and
also offers high data rates, as compared with conventional RF
based wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
With various attractive benefits from VLC, smart home can
be implemented using VLC as it would deliver safer, more
secure and scalable smart home. Infrared (IR) based device
control is common in consumer electronics and equipment.
However, the use of IR limits versatility in smart home
technologies compared with VLC, as VLC usually offers
illumination plus wireless connections and more diverse
control for smart home devices.
In this paper, we propose a smart home model based on
VLC. This model is based on the fact that nearly all the
facilities at home can easily be controlled using light and
visible light has negligible harm to humans as well as to
nature. The VLC system uses LEDs as a transmitting device,

This work was supported under the framework of international cooperation

program

managed

by

National

Research

Foundation

(20I4K2AIA2048581).

978-1-4799-7543-3/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

of

Korea

while photo detectors are used as receivers. Therefore, it is

considered efficient and cost effective as the infrastructure for
illumination can be used for communication [4].
In our proposed model, data is transmitted bidirectionally
for multiple devices using visible light. For an individual
device, data transmission is carried out using visible light time
division duplex (TDD) technique [5], i.e. half-duplex mode
transmission. To support multiple access of the devices,
orthogonal code to each device is allocated. Hence, the
devices can be controlled effectively by allocating the code to
each device for data transmission and reception in a time
division duplexing manner. The problem of shadowing and
obstacles caused by the movement of people during
transmission using VLC can be overcome by the installation of
repeaters [6].
Section II describes the proposed smart home model and
indoor channel model. The simulation results of the proposed
system are presented in Section III and conclusions are drawn
in Section IV.
II.

PROPOSED MODEL

The proposed model is a pure visible light based

bidirectional communication system for smart home. The
proposed model is illustrated in Fig. l.

Fig. 1. The proposed smart home model using VLC

Sensors (or transceivers) are assumed to be installed over all

devices in a typical room, together with the control unit. This
control unit will provide instructions to devices and/or notify
the remote or home user. The users will be able to receive the
notification on a mobile device via the VLC downlink (home
user) or wireless networks (remote user). Thus, the users can
control the devices and perform any types of desired task using
the mobile device.
The bidirectional communication between the devices and

379

2015 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE)

the control unit is performed using TDD under the assumption

that the transmission is synchronized for uplink and downlink,
i.e. while making an uplink transmission, no downlink
transmission is performed and vice versa. The multiple access
from various devices is achieved by assigning different
orthogonal codes to each device. It is important to note that the
devices are assumed to be harnessed with sensors (or
transceivers) facing up to the ceiling where transmitters and
receivers are installed. This is due to the fact that VLC is
performed on the line-of-sight transmission.
Fig. 2 shows a typical indoor testing environment where the
proposed bidirectional VLC link for multiple devices in smart
home is evaluated.

indoor environment in both directions, subject to their

locations.
11

Fig. 4. SNR distribution for the indoor environment.

10

1m)

Fig. 5. Downlink BER distribution for the indoor environment.

Also, the results show that compensation techniques are

required for those devices located in low SNR regions.

Fig. 2. Indoor environment for the bidirectional VLC smart home

III.

IV.

SIMULATION RESULTS

We performed simulations in the smart home environment

where three devices at different locations are assumed to exist,
as shown in Fig. 2. The BER bar plot for the three devices
during uplink and downlink data transmission is shown in Fig.
3. It is evident that the devices located near the sources show
better performance as compared to the device at the corner,
due to stronger light intensity and nearly absence of
intersymbol interference.

CONCLUSION

A bidirectional VLC link for smart home in a half-duplex

TDD scheme has been presented. The most challenging issue for
the VLC-based smart home deployment is the provision of an
uplink path. By employing the TDD mode and orthogonal
codes, it is shown that the uplink signal transmission can also
be efficiently provided. The proposed VLC based model can
be conducive to affordable, greener and safer smart homes.
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