Visible Light Communication for Intermittent Computing Battery-Less IoT Devices

Abstract

Eliminating the dependency on batteries as primary energy sources boosts the Internet of Things (IoT) to scale up to billion devices. New low power communication technologies combined with new energy harvesting techniques can significantly improve the energy efficiency of IoT battery-less devices. We present a communication system based on Visible Light Communication (VLC) embedded in a lighting system that enables data transmission and energy harvesting. The transmitter is a powerful LED light source. We avoid light variation and flickering of the source while transmitting data. Moreover, we embed the receiver in a cheap and compact solution by using only a single MCU and very few external components such as small-size photovoltaic cells. Experimental results show that our approach is a viable solution for powering the IoT battery-less devices of the future.