TY - JOUR
T1 - Visible Light Communications for Industrial Applications—Challenges and Potentials
AU - Almadani, Yousef
AU - Plets, David
AU - Bastiaens, Sander
AU - Joseph, Wout
AU - Ijaz, Muhammad
AU - Ghassemlooy, Zabih
AU - Rajbhandari, Sujan
N1 - Funding information: The European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant (764461 (VISION)). Part of this research was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant EP/P006280/1: Multifunctional Polymer Light-Emitting Diodes with Visible Light Communications (MARVEL).
PY - 2020/12/16
Y1 - 2020/12/16
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Industrial communications
KW - LiFi
KW - Localization
KW - VLC
KW - VLP
KW - Visible light positioning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097912376&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/electronics9122157
DO - 10.3390/electronics9122157
M3 - Review article
SN - 2079-9292
VL - 9
SP - 1
EP - 38
JO - Electronics
JF - Electronics
IS - 12
M1 - 2157
ER -