Call for Papers
IEEE Communications Magazine
Visible Light Communications — The Road to Standardization and Commercialization
Rationale
White illumination LEDs, with their long lifetimes and energy efficiencies at least ten times greater than incandescent bulbs, are being massively deployed in illumination applications. Visible light communication (VLC) networks modulate white LEDs at high rates to carry information in a way that is imperceptible to humans. Such communication networks solve the spectrum scarcity problem at RF, are inherently immune to RF interference and are license-free worldwide. In addition, they inherit the energy efficiency of LED technologies. Indeed, current mobile devices already contain a plethora of optical components, which could be simply modified to be VLC receivers. As many of the 14 billion incandescent bulbs in use worldwide are converted to more energy efficient LED lighting, a unique opportunity exists to augment them with communications and possible other capabilities.
White LED can have modulation bandwidths in the MHz range. However, these LEDs have inherently nonlinear current-to-intensity profiles and their performance degrades dramatically with increasing temperature and reduces device lifetime as well as output colour. A unique feature of VLC channels is that often the transmitted power is under the control of the user by simply dimming the light source. The signal emitted in a VLC network is highly localized beneath the fixture. Given the inability of GPS systems to accurately function indoors or in urban canyons, visible lighting fixtures have been proposed for localization applications. In addition, in order to enable connectivity the integration of a backbone link such as power line communications (PLC) or power over Ethernet (PoE) with VLC must be developed. Future applications, such a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure VLC are under active investigation and would benefit from standardization activities.
Scope
The goal of this Feature Topic Issue of the IEEE Communications Magazine
is to feature new advances and directions for VLC especially focused on existing and developing standardization and commercialization activities. Topics of interest include, but not limited to, the following:
- Historical perspective on existing VLC standards (802.11 IR PHY, 802.15.7, JEITA standards)
- Challenges in VLC system implementations (dimming, flicker, colour balance É).
- State-of-the-art prototype demonstration of VLC systems
- Joint illumination/communication system design. Impact of lighting requirements on VLC systems
- Localization using visible lighting. Standardization activities surrounding this application
- Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure VLC developments. Requirements for standardization.
- Challenges in VLC commercialization activities.
- Results of experiments integrating broadband backbones with VLC (e.g. PLC, PoE)
- Integration of VLC with other wireless technologies (at 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 60 GHz)
- Technology aspects of relevant intellectual property and patents
Submissions Guideline
This special issue solicits original work that must not be under consideration for publication in other venues. Authors should refer to the IEEE Communications author guidelines at http://www.comsoc.org/commag/paper-submission-guidelines for information about content and formatting of submissions. Manuscripts must be written in English and contain substantial tutorial content and be readable to a broad general audience working in other fields. All articles must be submitted through IEEE Manuscript Central (http://commag-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com) before the deadline.
Schedule
Submissions deadline: May 1, 2013
Author notifications: July 31, 2013
Final manuscripts due: October 1, 2013
Publication date: December 1, 2013
Guest Editors
Steve Hranilovic (McMaster University, Canada, hranilovic@ece.mcmaster.ca)
Lutz Lampe (University of British Columbia, Canada, Lampe@ece.ubc.ca)
Richard Roberts (Intel Labs, USA, richard.d.roberts@intel.com)
Srinath Hosur (Texas Instruments, USA, hosur@ti.com)