Green Visible Light Communications (gVLC)

Funded by: TURK TELEKOM
Period: 2012 - 2013

The fossil fuels will be extinct in near future, and the climate changes due to global warming will become much more severe. These factors force us to search greener solutions that will mitigate CO2 emissions and decrease the overall energy consumption. As technology develops, the fields which use wireless solutions have increased rapidly, and consequently wireless devices have become an indispensable part of our lives. However, this widespread usage of wireless technology makes it an important part of total energy consumption. Therefore, the need for greener solutions for wireless technologies has emerged.

We propose using visible light communication (VLC) as a greener solution for indoor environments as an alternative to RF communication systems. VLC is preferable, since visible light part of the electromagnetic spectrum is still unregulated, and the power consumed for processing visible light is lower than its RF counterpart. Moreover, the illumination infrastructure and the light sources used everywhere can be utilized for easier implementation of VLC systems. In this project, we plan to design and produce an optimum communication system consuming minimum energy using visible light.