Visible Light Communications for Industrial Applications—Challenges and Potentials

Abstract

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a short-range optical wireless communication technology that has been gaining attention due to its potential to offload heavy data traffic from the congested radio wireless spectrum. At the same time, wireless communications are becoming crucial to smart manufacturing within the scope of Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 is a developing trend of high-speed data exchange in automation for manufacturing technologies and is referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. This trend requires fast, reliable, low-latency, and cost-effective data transmissions with fast synchronizations to ensure smooth operations for various processes. VLC is capable of providing reliable, low-latency, and secure connections that do not penetrate walls and is immune to electromagnetic interference. As such, this paper aims to show the potential of VLC for industrial wireless applications by examining the latest research work in VLC systems. This work also highlights and classifies challenges that might arise with the applicability of VLC and visible light positioning (VLP) systems in these settings. Given the previous work performed in these areas, and the major ongoing experimental projects looking into the use of VLC systems for industrial applications, the use of VLC and VLP systems for industrial applications shows promising potential.

Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Adaptive Handover Mechanism for VLC in a Hybrid 6G Network Architecture

“…After a state transition, every state returns a reward with a certain probability distribution, and an additional award or penalty (a positive or negative reward) is given based on the expected estimate of the last action. The relationship between the RSS that a UD receives from an AP and the distance between them follows the Lambert model in equation (3). We refer to the Poisson point process in [21] and assume that the reward R returned by each state and the distance between the UD and the AP are related by a cumulative Poisson distribution, which is given as:…”

“…However, there are still many problems to be solved despite the numerous advantages of VLC. As mentioned in [3], indoor attenuation and blockage are important challenges for VLC in 6G networking. Accordingly, 6G hotspots must act as central coordinators to implement handover decisions in order to solve the problem that the connection between a user device (UD) and its original access point (AP) becomes gradually unreliable due to attenuation of the visible light signal from a single AP with the user's movement; in addition, these hotspots should serve as reliable wireless APs to maintain a UD's connection to the network when VLC is blocked by human actions or obstacles.…”

Demonstration of a Sub-Pixel Outdoor Optical Camera Communication Link

“…OCC aprovecha la vasta disponibilidad de las cámaras digitales, considerablemente más abundantes que PD individuales, pero a la vez con mayores limitaciones de tasa de datos alcanzables. Por ejemplo, se han reportado sistemas VLC basados en PD que sobrepasan los Gbps de rendimiento [13], [14], en cambio, para OCC la tasa de captura de fotogramas de las cámaras convencionales supone una limitante inherente [2], [15], [16]. Se pueden encontrar así trabajos en orientados a la explotación de sistemas de modulación avanzados [17]- [19] para alcanzar mayores tasas de datos.…”

Evaluation of Misalignment Effect in Vehicle-to-Vehicle Visible Light Communications: Experimental Demonstration of a 75 Meters Link

“…The ubiquitous character of LED light sources also enables the VLC technology to be suitable in Internet of Things (IoT) applications [ 4 , 5 ]. Due to its ability to provide low latency, energy-efficient and cost-effective connections, the VLC technology has been found to be appropriate for industrial use, including in the Industry 4.0 domain [ 6 ].…”