Software-centric Visible Light Communication for the Internet of Things

Thomas R. Gross
ETH Zurich

Visible Light Communication (VLC) based on LEDs for light emission and reception can be realized using simple components, delegating many of the "hard" problems to software. We present a software-centric approach that supports networking a wide range of devices -- devices that include only simple single LEDs (such as wearables, toys, consumer electronics) as well as LED light bulbs that run Linux and provide a VLC communication fabric (room-area network). One of the benefits of the software-centric approach is easy integration into distributed applications - a necessary condition for a pervasive communication infrastructure for the Internet of Things that requires a wide range of services (localization, time, authentication, etc).

Joint work with Stefan Mangold (Lovefield Wireless, Inc.) and Stefan Schmid (ETH Zurich).

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About the speaker:

Thomas Gross has been a PI or co-PI of various research grants and contracts. Recent projects, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, include the "Datacenter Observatory", a joint EPFL-ETH Zurich-USI project to support system-level research and teaching, and a collaboration with USI on novel approaches for dynamic program analysis.

Contact information:

Thomas R. Gross ETHZ