Potential and challenges of visible light communication for industrial assembly lines with mobile workstations

The popularisation of LED technology has enabled the development of new optical telecommunication technologies. The most popular in this sector is Visible Light Communication (VLC). It uses the visible part of the spectrum to send data and illuminate simultaneously. At the same time, as industries increasingly install mobile equipment on their assembly lines, there is a demand in this market for reliable and robust communication technology. The advantage of VLC compared to Radio Frequency (RF) technology in the industry is its immunity to electromagnetic interference as most industrial facilities are built in metal. This paper presents the foundations of an innovative solution to meet the needs of mobile assembly lines. In this example, the VLC system has the dual role of illuminating the operator or robot and communicating to and from a central controller. A two-way system, called Li-Fi that uses a downstream communication in visible light and the upstream in infrared, has been chosen. The work presented demonstrates, through the results of a simulator, that this technology can meet mobile assembly line requirements in terms of communication.