System Architecture Directions for a Software-Defined Lighting Infrastructure
Ye-Sheng Kuo, Pat Pannuto, Prabal Dutta

Citation
Ye-Sheng Kuo, Pat Pannuto, Prabal Dutta. "System Architecture Directions for a Software-Defined Lighting Infrastructure". Workshop on Visible Light Communication Systems, ACM, 7, September, 2014.

Abstract
After years of development, cost-effective, energy-efficient, and long-lasting solid-state lighting technology is finally a viable alternative to incandescent and fluorescent lights. Unfortunately, the remarkable march of semiconductor technology into the lighting industry is almost entirely in the form of a substitute good- one kind of lighting technology that replaces another- but this, we argue, squanders a unique opportunity for lighting to enable a bevy of new applications. In this paper, we discuss applications in health, energy efficiency, entertainment, communications, indoor positioning, device configuration, and time synchronization. We then prototype several of the indoor applications to explore a software- defined lighting (SDL) architecture that could support them. We observe that many applications are possible with minimal changes to commercial LED luminaries -the addition of a transistor coupled with a microcontroller or digital logic. Other applications require more capable front ends- custom RGBW LED drivers and high-speed optical receivers, for example. This leads us to conclude that a useful exploration of the design space requires an open, experimental, and extensible platform for the luminaries, their optical interfaces, and their communication backhauls. We envision a data plane that consists of a mesh network of luminaires that route IP traffic across their optical, RF, Ethernet, and powerline car- rier interfaces, a cloudlet-managed control plane that synchronizes and coordinates nearby luminaires at the physical and link layers, and a programming interface that allows multiple applications to share the lighting infrastructure. We prototype several applications to demonstrate viability, and take a primitive stab at demonstrating application coexistence. A major question is how to multiplex these various applications in a more principled manner on a shared lighting infrastructure whose primary role is illumination (implying that any human-perceptible flicker or flashing will be unacceptable). Looking ahead, we draw inspiration from software-defined networking's approach to sharing the network, and software-defined radios' approach to processing waveforms, to build out an SDL infrastructure and its application programming interfaces.

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Citation formats  
  • HTML
    Ye-Sheng Kuo, Pat Pannuto, Prabal Dutta. <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/335.html"
    >System Architecture Directions for a Software-Defined
    Lighting Infrastructure</a>, Workshop on Visible Light
    Communication Systems, ACM, 7, September, 2014.
  • Plain text
    Ye-Sheng Kuo, Pat Pannuto, Prabal Dutta. "System
    Architecture Directions for a Software-Defined Lighting
    Infrastructure". Workshop on Visible Light
    Communication Systems, ACM, 7, September, 2014.
  • BibTeX
    @inproceedings{KuoPannutoDutta14_SystemArchitectureDirectionsForSoftwareDefinedLighting,
        author = {Ye-Sheng Kuo and Pat Pannuto and Prabal Dutta},
        title = {System Architecture Directions for a
                  Software-Defined Lighting Infrastructure},
        booktitle = {Workshop on Visible Light Communication Systems},
        organization = {ACM},
        day = {7},
        month = {September},
        year = {2014},
        abstract = {After years of development, cost-effective,
                  energy-efficient, and long-lasting solid-state
                  lighting technology is finally a viable
                  alternative to incandescent and fluorescent
                  lights. Unfortunately, the remarkable march of
                  semiconductor technology into the lighting
                  industry is almost entirely in the form of a
                  substitute good- one kind of lighting technology
                  that replaces another- but this, we argue,
                  squanders a unique opportunity for lighting to
                  enable a bevy of new applications. In this paper,
                  we discuss applications in health, energy
                  efficiency, entertainment, communications, indoor
                  positioning, device configuration, and time
                  synchronization. We then prototype several of the
                  indoor applications to explore a software- defined
                  lighting (SDL) architecture that could support
                  them. We observe that many applications are
                  possible with minimal changes to commercial LED
                  luminaries -the addition of a transistor coupled
                  with a microcontroller or digital logic. Other
                  applications require more capable front ends-
                  custom RGBW LED drivers and high-speed optical
                  receivers, for example. This leads us to conclude
                  that a useful exploration of the design space
                  requires an open, experimental, and extensible
                  platform for the luminaries, their optical
                  interfaces, and their communication backhauls. We
                  envision a data plane that consists of a mesh
                  network of luminaires that route IP traffic across
                  their optical, RF, Ethernet, and powerline car-
                  rier interfaces, a cloudlet-managed control plane
                  that synchronizes and coordinates nearby
                  luminaires at the physical and link layers, and a
                  programming interface that allows multiple
                  applications to share the lighting infrastructure.
                  We prototype several applications to demonstrate
                  viability, and take a primitive stab at
                  demonstrating application coexistence. A major
                  question is how to multiplex these various
                  applications in a more principled manner on a
                  shared lighting infrastructure whose primary role
                  is illumination (implying that any
                  human-perceptible flicker or flashing will be
                  unacceptable). Looking ahead, we draw inspiration
                  from software-defined networking's approach to
                  sharing the network, and software-defined radios'
                  approach to processing waveforms, to build out an
                  SDL infrastructure and its application programming
                  interfaces.},
        URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/335.html}
    }
    

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