Follow the lights to a new wireless heaven
Imagine a world where refrigerator lights beam information to your cellphone telling you what to buy during your next trip to the grocery store.
That's one of the ideas researchers at the University of California's Riverside campus are investigating during a five-year, multimillion-dollar project into using energy-sipping, cheap LED lights to create wireless connections, even as they illuminate rooms.
However, inventions like clever fridge lights barely scratch the surface of the kinds of changes that breakthroughs in the field could bring. Researchers say the advent of wireless communications through lighting could change the way we build homes and offices in the same dramatic way elevators allowed architects to design skyscrapers.
Srikanth Krishnamurthy, a computer science and engineering professor at the university and one of the project's team members, said buildings may become more open-concept, with space between the walls and ceiling for light to creep through. That way, a wireless connection could be maintained from room to room.
"The thing today is we don't care how lights are placed," he said. "The lighting has to be revisited because now these devices, these LEDs will have to communicate with each other. . . . The planning itself is going to be somewhat different.
"You cannot just put lights where you want. You have to place them in a way so that wherever you go, you can use your computer or your phone."
He said the project, dubbed UC-Light, is all about being green.
"The whole idea here is to decrease energy costs," he said. "These LED lighting systems are very low power." Krishnamurthy said lighting is already essential, so using it as a pathway for devices to communicate -- rather than conventional Wi-Fi -- is a logical way to save energy.
He said researchers have already found that by slightly increasing the intensity of LEDs, light can be used to establish wireless communications. The increase in visible light is not noticeable to the eye, he added.
"In the next five years we will really know how good this technology is," he said.
source
That's one of the ideas researchers at the University of California's Riverside campus are investigating during a five-year, multimillion-dollar project into using energy-sipping, cheap LED lights to create wireless connections, even as they illuminate rooms.
However, inventions like clever fridge lights barely scratch the surface of the kinds of changes that breakthroughs in the field could bring. Researchers say the advent of wireless communications through lighting could change the way we build homes and offices in the same dramatic way elevators allowed architects to design skyscrapers.
Srikanth Krishnamurthy, a computer science and engineering professor at the university and one of the project's team members, said buildings may become more open-concept, with space between the walls and ceiling for light to creep through. That way, a wireless connection could be maintained from room to room.
"The thing today is we don't care how lights are placed," he said. "The lighting has to be revisited because now these devices, these LEDs will have to communicate with each other. . . . The planning itself is going to be somewhat different.
"You cannot just put lights where you want. You have to place them in a way so that wherever you go, you can use your computer or your phone."
He said the project, dubbed UC-Light, is all about being green.
"The whole idea here is to decrease energy costs," he said. "These LED lighting systems are very low power." Krishnamurthy said lighting is already essential, so using it as a pathway for devices to communicate -- rather than conventional Wi-Fi -- is a logical way to save energy.
He said researchers have already found that by slightly increasing the intensity of LEDs, light can be used to establish wireless communications. The increase in visible light is not noticeable to the eye, he added.
"In the next five years we will really know how good this technology is," he said.
source
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