Visible Light Communication for Indoor Monitoring (VLADIMIR)*

Overview of VLADIMIR concept

Lighting is present in most indoor areas. Apart from illumination, the lighting infrastructure can also be used for data communication using Visible Light Communication (VLC) technology. VLC encodes the data into fast changes on the intensity of the LED light in transmission and, at the receiver, these intensity fluctuations are detected using a Photodiode.

So far, the presence of opaque objects inside the room has been considered as a disadvantage for VLC, as they affect the intensity of the optical wireless signal that is received. Nevertheless, if the optical power that is scattered back on the different visible light wavelengths (or colours) is properly characterised, lighting can be also used for indoor monitoring purposes, eliminating the necessity of redundant sensing devices or surveillance video cameras.

The aim of VLADIMIR project is to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing a monitoring system for indoor areas sensing the variations that the optical wireless channel experiences when a “target” event takes place.