In the near future, with the development of 5G NR, a massive number of IoT nodes are expected to come online. Acquiring bandwidth from an overcrowded licensed radio frequency spectrum as well as overcoming battery life constraints will become the main challenges for these IoT based devices. As a promising solution for the above challenges, this work provides a feasibility study and an implementation framework for a visible light communication-based energy-autonomous IoT node. This work proposes the use of printed electronic technology to minimize the physical characteristics and cost of the IoT node. In the future, energy-autonomous IoT nodes could be available virtually on any surface. Whenever the node is exposed to light, it will be connected to internet.

The millimeter wave (mmWave) communication uses directional antennas. Hence, achieving fine alignment of transmit and receive beams at the initial access phase is quite challenging and time-consuming. In this paper, we provide a dynamic-weight based beam sweeping direction and synchronization signal block (SSB) allocation algorithm to optimize the cell search of the initial access in mmWave 5G NR networks. The number of SSBs transmitted in each beam sweeping direction depends on previously learned experience which is based on the number of detected UEs (user equipment) per SSB for each sweeping direction. Overall, numerical simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm is shown to be capable of detecting more users with a lower misdetection probability. Furthermore, it is possible to achieve the same performance with a smaller number of dynamic resource (i.e., SSB) allocation, compared to constant resource allocation.

Visible light communication (VLC)-basedInternet of Things (IoT) designs are rapidly gaining attention due to their unique communication-friendly features such as the ability to support high data rates, free-spectrum usage, and inherent security. In addition, the same infrastructure used by the VLC system can be exploited to support optical wireless power transmission (OWPT). The Light-based IoT (LIoT) concept encompasses both wireless data and power transmission. Recently, the use of printed electronics (PE) technology has been considered as a highly attractive approach to implementing the LIoT concept, as PE will allow manufacturing energy-autonomous, low-cost and sustainable nodes that can be attached to virtually any object. In this paper, we study the problem of communication and power transfer purposes in the uplink direction. In particular, we carry out a feasibility study comparing the use of OLEDs and conventional LEDs for the mentioned tasks. The performance of actual stateof-the-art printed optical components are measured, evaluated, and contrasted with that of similar conventional (non-printed) components. We found that printed OLEDs, though exhibiting sub-optimal performance, offer a robust performance to be used as key components in the implementation of the LIoT concept.

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As internet of things (IoT)-based wireless personal area networks (WPAN) get more popular, visible light communication (VLC) offers unique advantages over radio frequency (RF) communication, such as unrestricted reusable spectrum and high security. Additionally, visible light can carry both signals and optical power, making it a useful medium for exchanging information and energy between network nodes. A VLC-based wireless personal area network (WPAN) concept for light-based energy autonomous IoT is proposed in this paper, which can share both data and energy between nodes. The network uses photovoltaic (PV) based energy harvesting for operation while sharing excess energy between nodes to increase efficiency. Performance of the main concept of the network is evaluated and discussed in the paper. In the future, this kind of network will enable self-sustaining IoT networks.