Boston University College of Engineering

Office of Communications
44 Cummington Street
Boston, MA 02215
(617) 353-9766

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Mike Seele Contact: Ron Rosenberg
BU College of Engineering BU Media Relations
(617) 353-9766 (617) 358-1240
mseele@bu.ed ronrosen@bu.edu

ILLUMINATE & COMMUNICATE

Boston University Partners in NSF Challenge to Create
Next Generation Wireless Network Using Visible Light

(BOSTON) Oct. 6, 2008 -- Boston University’s College of Engineering is a partner

launching a major program, under a National Science Foundation grant, to develop the next
generation of wireless communications technology based on visible light instead of radio waves.
Researchers expect to piggyback data communications capabilities on low-power light emitting
diodes, or LEDs, to create “Smart Lighting” that would be faster and more secure than current
network technology.
“Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with
you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster
of wires,” said BU Engineering Professor Thomas Little. “This could be done with an LED-based
communications network that also provides light – all over existing power lines with low power
consumption, high reliability and no electromagnetic interference. Ultimately, the system is
expected to be applicable from existing illumination devices, like swapping light bulbs for LEDs.”
This initiative, known as the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center
(http://smartlighting.bu.edu), is part of an $18.5 million, multi-year NSF program awarded to
Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of New Mexico to
develop the optical communication technology that would make an LED light the equivalent of a
WiFi access point. This innovative alternative may one day replace most of today’s lighting
devices.
Rensselaer and UNM will work on creating novel devices along with systems
applications to better understand the proliferation of smart lighting technologies plus materials

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BOSTON UNIVERSITY/SMARTLIGHTING/Page 2 of 3

needed for wireless devices to interface with the network. Together with BU, the three partners
will have 30 faculty researchers plus students, postdoctoral researchers and visiting industry
engineers as regular contributors to the research conducted by the Smart Lighting ERC.
Boston University researches will focus on developing computer networking applications,
notably the solid state optical technology that will form the network’s backbone. Funding for the
BU portion of the program is expected to total about $1 million per year for the next 10 years
plus additional funding from industrial partners and possibly the formation of new businesses by
entrepreneurs.
“This is a unique opportunity to create a transcendent technology that not only enables
energy efficient lighting, but also creates the next generation of secure wireless
communications,” Little added. “As we switch from incandescent and compact florescent lighting
to LEDs in the coming years, we can simultaneously build a faster and more secure
communications infrastructure at a modest cost along with new and unexpected applications.”
Little envisions indoor optical wireless communications systems that use white LED
lighting within a room – akin to the television remote control device – to provide Internet
connections to computers, personal digital assistants, television and radio reception, telephone
connections and thermostat temperature control.
With widespread LED lighting, a vast network of light-based communication is possible,
Little noted. A wireless device within sight of an enabled LED could send and receive data
though the air – initially at speeds in the 1 to 10 megabit per second range – with each LED
serving as an access point to the network. Such a network would have the potential to offer
users greater bandwidth than current RF technology.
Moreover, since this white light does not penetrate opaque surfaces such as walls, there
is a higher level of security, as eavesdropping is not possible. LED lights also consume far less
energy than RF technology, offering the opportunity to build a communication network without
added energy costs and reducing carbon emissions over the long term.
"The innovative LED-based networking research that Smart Lighting ERC is conducting
has the potential to be extremely positive and disruptive to the market,” said Inder Monga,
Leader, Advanced Networking Research at Nortel. "Nortel believes the era of hyperconnectivity
is upon us and the potential new applications that this visible light-based networking could
enable with its energy efficient qualities, privacy and its ubiquitous nature is very exciting."
The ability to rapidly turn LED lights on and off – so fast the change is imperceptible to

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BOSTON UNIVERSITY/SMARTLIGHTING/Page 3 of 3

the human eye – is key to the technology. Flickering light in patterns enables data transmission
without any noticeable change in room lighting. And the technology is not limited to indoor lights;
its first real test may very well come outdoors, in the automotive industry.
“This technology has many implications for automobile safety,” Little said. “Brake lights
already use LEDs, so it’s not a stretch to outfit an automobile with a sensor that detects the
brake lights of the car in front of it and either alerts an inattentive driver or actively slows the
car.”
For more information, please see http://smartlighting.bu.edu.

About Boston University:

Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher
education and research. With more than 30,000 students, it is the fourth largest independent
university in the United States. BU consists of 17 colleges and schools along with a number of
multi-disciplinary centers and institutes which are central to the school's research and teaching
mission.
The BU College of Engineering offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in the
departments of Biomedical, Mechanical, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. It also has
two interdisciplinary divisions focused on research and graduate education: the Division of
Systems Engineering; and the Division of Materials Science & Engineering.

About National Science Foundation ERCs:

The NSF ERCs share the goal of advancing knowledge, technology and innovations that
address significant societal problems and provide the workforce and technical foundation for
economic competitiveness. NSF will invest approximately $92.5 million in the centers over the
next five years. The five centers launched this fall initiate a third generation of NSF ERCs that
place increased emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, partnerships with small research
firms, and international collaboration and cultural exchange. Including the new awards, NSF
supports 15 ERCs in the areas of biotechnology and health care; energy, sustainability and
infrastructure; and microelectronics, sensing and information technology.

###
 Radio Frequency versus LED Optical Lighting
Attribute RF@2.4 GHz LED Optical Advantage

Security/Privacy Penetrates walls Does not penetrate walls, prevents LED optical
snooping
Available bandwidth Signals sent at same frequency can Light can be directed – smart light sources LED optical
capacity interfere with one another and thus can be tuned to adapt to different
limited by contention; signals environments and narrow footprints
degrade from peak
Cost of additional Very high when available None (yet) LED optical
bandwidth spectrum
Interference Self, other users on same frequency Visible natural (sun) and man made light Varies
slows transmission speed, ISM (non-LED lamps) slow transmission
sources speeds
Multipath fading Destructive interference: RF waves Interference appears as noise. No signal LED optical
bounce off conductive surfaces and cancelling.
arrive at different times and/or are
out of phase
Path redundancy Achieved with multiple access Achieved with multiple LEDs LED optical
points
Transmission Speed 100 megabits per second deployed Comparable, but with reuse of volume for LED optical
higher aggregate speed.
Estimated comparative < $20 < $2 (based on IrDA) LED optical
cost

Smart Lighting Center at Boston University, smartlighting.bu.edu

For more information, please contact Linda Grosser at lgrosser@bu.edu
 SMART LIGHTING CENTER
Q&A

1Q. WHY ARE THE SMART LIGHTING ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTER (ERC)
PROJECT AND ITS GOALS SIGNIFICANT?

1A. Replacing existing lighting with low-power, high-efficiency LEDs is significant in

itself due to the enormous energy savings and reduction in carbon emissions. Integrating
light emitting diodes (LEDS) with optical wireless communications is a new technology
paradigm that combines brighter light and longer life bulbs with ubiquitous network
access provided by – the existing infrastructure – light fixtures, power lines or network
cabling. The combination provides significant energy savings for lighting homes and
offices, almost limitless bandwidth for multiple users, greater security and privacy and
many desirable technical characteristics not offered in current radio-frequency (RF)
communications, such as no electromagnetic interference. Note, in connecting the
physical world with the Internet, RF and optical free-space communications will coexist,
each serving complementary and, in some cases, competitive services.

2Q. IS COMMUNICATING WITH VISIBLE LIGHT NEW AND DIFFERENT? DON’T

WE ROUTINELY USE INVISIBLE LIGHT DEVICES?

2A. People have used visible light to communicate throughout history, and more recently,
such as crew members sending signals between ships at sea and the first working indoor
optical communications system built in 1980 by IBM in Zurich, Switzerland. The
promising technology faded with the initial rise in Internet usage and the success of
local-area networking. On the wireless scene, clearly WiFi has become a dominant player
in interconnecting devices with wired networks. On a smaller scale, indoor invisible
optical wireless technology has been around for a decade such as the infrared signals
found in TV remote controls plus laser light used in point-to-point communications
between buildings. Now ERC researchers at BU are taking the next big step uniting
illumination with communication to create encoded light transmissions for a wide range
of new and interesting applications. For example, you might turn on a white LED ceiling
lamp, from a digital wall switch, to illuminate the room and simultaneously enable your
laptop, computer, PDA – even your thermostat – to wirelessly receive data transmissions.
Any device bathed by light might be enabled to connect to this new visible light network.

3Q. SO WHAT ARE THE REAL COST SAVINGS OF THIS NEW WIRELESS OPTICAL
TECHNOLOGY GOING TO BE?

3A. For starters, LED bulbs are high priced ($15 to $90 each), but that cost is
considerably lower when measured against their longevity of 30,000 to 50,000 hours. By
contrast, compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs cost $2 each and last about 5,000 hours versus
1,000 hours for the vanishing incandescent bulbs that are $1 each. But with volume
production, and new materials and device development, these prices will fall.

Smart Lighting Center at Boston University, smartlighting.bu.edu

For more information, please contact Linda Grosser at lgrosser@bu.edu
LED bulbs also produce less heat, which can save on air conditioning costs, are more
robust to shock and vibration, and unlike CF bulbs they contain no mercury.
Communications uses the same medium – light – so there are no additional energy costs
due to RF transmission circuits. Ultimately, worldwide deployment of solid-state lighting
systems could result in financial savings of about $18 trillion dollars over a 10-year
period.

4Q. IS BOSTON UNIVERSITY’S RESEARCH FOCUSED ON APPLICATIONS OF THIS

PROMISING TECHNOLOGY?

4A.Yes. BU’s major contribution will be on LED communications and networking

systems with additional work on nanomaterials and photonic crystals. The research – led
by Thomas D.C. Little, PhD, Professor and Associate Chair, Graduate Studies, in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering – includes constructing two
networking testbeds to study potential indoor and outdoor scenarios for both line-of-site
and diffractive lighting. The indoor testbed will be a room with optical access points
designed to support interchangeable LED technologies to examine a variety of
modulation schemes as they emerge from the core research. An outdoor testbed would be
for dual-use lighting to study how light-based communication can improve safety in
transportation systems. For example, equipping vehicles with LED-based communication
in headlights and brake lights supports automatic emergency braking to prevent
accidents. Similar plans call for vehicles to receive traffic congestion information from
roadway signs and automatically pass the warnings to other vehicles.

5Q. WHO ELSE IS WORKING ON THIS SMART LIGHTING RESEARCH PROJECT?

WHO IS THE SPONSOR AND HOW LONG IS THE INITIAL PROJECT?

5A. In addition to Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University
of New Mexico comprise the three primary research universities who have been awarded
a five year grant from the National Science Foundation with the possibility for a second
five year renewal totaling $18.5 million. With anticipated contributions by industrial and
non-federal cash contributions, the Smart Lighting research program could receive $50
million over 10 years.

Boston University will receive about $1 million per year including $750,000 annually in
NSF funding. RPI’s research focus is on solid state devices, materials and systems while
UNM will concentrate on nanomaterials and devices, supporting testbeds in bioimaging
and displays.

###

Smart Lighting Center at Boston University, smartlighting.bu.edu

For more information, please contact Linda Grosser at lgrosser@bu.edu
 Thomas Little, BU lead and Smart-
lighting Center Associate Director,
with a consumer LED light bulb.

© 2008 Boston University

BU faculty investigators, Jeff Car-

ruthers, Thomas Little, and Hatice
Altug employing a prototype LED
transceiver for “illumination and
communication.”

© 2008 Boston University

BU graduate student, Peter Dib,

demonstrating free space optical
communications at a recent meeting
with industrial partners of the BU
Sensor Network Consortium.

© 2008 Boston University

For more information, please visit http://smartlighting.bu.edu,

or contact Linda Grosser at lgrosser@bu.edu.
 Free Space Optical Communications and
Their Applications for the Future

1. Office Illustration

• Dual use of LED lighting for illumination and communication

• Ubiquitous lighting enables ubiquitous computing

2. Auto Illustration

• The use of LED communications for improving automotive safety.

• Directional communication with LED brake lights enables inter-vehicle

communications and the relaying of active braking messages

3. Airplane Illustration

• The use of LED communications for reducing ground collisions at airports

• LEDs provide signaling among airport lighting infrastructure, ground

vehicles and aircraft

4. Today and the Future Illustration

• Deployment of wireless networking in the current and future scenarios.

WiFi relies on network cabling and access points.

• Future systems leverage existing wiring – networking or power lines – to

disseminate data to LED lighting as the new access point

Smart Lighting Center at Boston University, smartlighting.bu.edu

For more information, please contact Linda Grosser at lgrosser@bu.edu
 smart LED lighting

68
clock
encoded data wireless
(on/off) thermostat

printer
PDA

HD video streaming
laptop

internet access

PDA

© 2008 Boston University

data
(water me)

active braking
message

relay message
© 2008 Boston University

to next car
 oncoming
aircraft

23 5
localized warning
message encoded
in LED light

taxiing aircraft

warning message
received in cockpit

© 2008 Boston University

TODAY FUTURE

120 V

CAT5

BPL

modulated
LED light
RJ45

CAT5
© 2008 Boston University

WIFI