Collaborative Research: CCRI: Planning: A Visible Light Communication (VLC) Testbed for Next Generation Wireless Research

The use of optical frequencies for communication through the concept of visible light communication (VLC) has garnered significant interest over the last decade. This is attributed to the multitude of capabilities of VLC, including high data rate wireless links, directional and thus potentially secure transmissions, and operation in the unregulated optical spectrum (400--800 THz band).

VLC is a strongly emerging area and commercial adoption of the technology is possible only if it can past-muster through extensive experimentation and testing. As of now, there is no real VLC testbed available for conducting coordinated remote VLC experiments at scale. As a step towards the advancement of a VLC testbed design and development, this planning project brings together a collaborative team across two US universities to execute a set of research and planning activities that can set the precedent for a full-fledged testbed development.

The overarching goal of this planning phase of the testbed design is to work out a baseline testbed architecture, survey the community's and stakeholders' interest in design, development and usage of the testbed, and evolve the design based on the community feedback.

This project develops a plan for designing a remotely accessible indoor VLC testbed that will constitute a large array of VLC nodes in a rectangular grid pattern under a static configuration and integrate a number of VLC nodes under a mobile configuration. The scientific merits of the project includes (i) design and implementation of various VLC hardware and software components for a VLC transceiver integrable into a testbed environment, (ii) small-scale feasibility trials of reproducible VLC research experiments, (iii) design and development of a portable and modular VLC experimentation kit, (iv) informing the research community and general public about the testbed and survey their interest, and gather feedback about our design and implementation of the testbed, and (v) analyses of the information and feedback from the community towards evolving the VLC testbed architecture design.

The proposed planning, development activities, and workshops and meetings will foster community outreach and interest in the VLC research, and provide a learning platform for undergraduate and graduate students.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.