Infrared Mobile Transmissions for Smart Indoor Applications

Abstract

Optical wireless communication systems has many applications in smart environments, such as visible light-based ones because providing both illumination and downlinks. However, the uplink design remains difficult especially considering mobile transmitters. In this paper, we study an infrared uplink using an optical transmitter in a mobile sensor device that is placed either on a robotic platform, or worn by a person. The infrared channel modelling takes into account line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight links along with blockages linked to human or robot presence. We show the importance of taking into account human body in channel modelling for the evaluation of the results according to the different cases. In addition, we highlight a compromise in the choice of the characteristics of the optical elements between obtaining the best performance and underestimating performance evaluation when taking or not into account the body in the channel modelling. Experiments permits validating theoretical conclusions.