Wireless Lighting. Smart lighting. These are phrases that
are starting to reach market, at least among early adopters. To some it sounds
like the obvious next thing. To others it sounds like techies making simple things
complicated. It’s certainly a new and
growing trend, with several start-up companies and projects in the area, and
some major electronics companies joining the fray.
“Wireless lighting” refers to systems in which individual
bulbs can be controlled wirelessly. “Smart lighting” refers to systems in which
individual bulbs can be controlled intelligently by a computerized control
unit. In many systems the two are combined, with a computer controlling the
light bulbs intelligently and wirelessly, and the terms are often used
interchangeably.
Is smart wireless lighting the wave of the future, or a
silly use of technology for no good purpose?
Looking at some of the start-ups in the area gives credence
to the cynics. One
project, for example, promotes the ability to adjust the lights in your
room from your smartphone or tablet, having lights dim or flash when you get
notifications on your phone, and have a set of lights flicker to the beat of
the music you’re listening to. Another
project uses smart lights to visualize data, changing color to reflect the
weather forecast, the types of messages waiting for you, and so on. Are these
really the goals and dreams that drive new technology? Will enough people want
to have any of the above lighting features to enable a company to stay in
business?
Bigger companies, however, are focusing on delivering real
value with wireless lighting. For example, LG Innotek, a sister company of LG
Electronics (LGEAF), is delivering wireless lighting
in industrial settings, where site owners want to deploy lighting without
having to run the electrical wires in the walls and ceilings. This benefit has
made LG Innotek’s wireless lights valuable to a number of big industrial
customers. They also add motion sensors to their lights, enabling them to act
as security or emergency lights.
LG Innotek is now taking their wireless lights to a new
level. The company is exploring the use of ultra-wideband (UWB) radio chips
from a start-up company called DecaWave
in place of its current wireless network. UWB has several benefits, including
low power usage, but its most game-changing benefit is its support for indoor
location positioning. DecaWave’s DW1000 chips, currently under exploration by
LG Innotek, can determine their own locations relative to the locations of
other chips in the area. With UWB-equipped lighting installed, other UWB-equipped
objects or tags in the area will be able to determine their locations very
precisely.
As a practical benefit, lights that contain
location-positioning chips can be put anywhere, and they will register their
own locations in the controller system. This means that controlling the lights
wirelessly doesn’t require managing where each light bulb is placed, rather each
light can position itself on a console’s map. This is a big time-saver in a big
industrial site.
Wireless location-tracking lights can comprise a
location-tracking system, to track the locations of people, equipment, carts,
and other industrial equipment as they move around the site. A big challenge in
industrial location systems of this sort is to deploy the location-tracking
infrastructure, and if this is included in the lights, this requirement is
handled.
Other companies are also looking at adding location positioning
to lighting systems. Philips (PHG), for example, is also planning
to add location to their personal wireless lighting systems. They are using
Visible
Light Communications (VLC) technology to transmit each light’s location to
camera-equipped devices nearby. This has an advantage of working on more
devices, since the visible light communication can be picked up by smartphones
and tablets with their built-in cameras, but it won’t work when the lights are
off, when power is off, in an emergency situation, and when there is smoke or
other interference in the air.
In principle, visible light can in principle provide more
precise distance and location measurements than most radio methods. When light
is used in very short pulses, it can be used for high-bandwidth communication
and can measure distances very precisely. But in practice, most visible light
systems for indoor location can only handle signals from one light at a time.
Such systems can determine their general location, usually right below the
light whose signal they are receiving, and this is enough for a lot of
applications. But such systems cannot do precise location positioning in the way
that radio-based methods can, and certainly not achieve the 10cm accuracy that
UWB-based methods can achieve.
Most importantly, the UWB wireless technology being explored
by LG Innotek won’t only be for location positioning, but will also support the
wireless control that LG Innotek has been delivering. While it’s transmitting
information to turn lights on and off, the radio waves themselves will support
highly-accurate location positioning. At the same time as industrial sites are
selecting LG Innotek’s lighting for the cost benefits of wireless control,
they’ll gain the ability to deliver location positioning.
So if you’re working on deploying wireless lighting around
your site, it makes sense to deploy lighting that supports location
positioning. Not only will your console know where your lights are
automatically, but you can also track locations of people and things moving
around your site. These benefits might not be as fun as having lights flicker
to the beat of your music, but it’s a lot more tangible a benefit.