A light-based communication architecture for smart city applications

The main objective of this paper is to build a communication architecture to enable seamless integration of the light-based technology in the smart cities infrastructure. Specifically, we propose the deployment of optical nodes in locations of interest for smart city applications (such as road intersections, lighting systems, and signalling equipment) in order to enable the integration of sensing, tracking, and communication services. The proposed network architecture, built on these nodes, is structured into three layers. The first layer is based on the visible light communication (VLC) technology that will allow optical access to users and sensing of specific events and parameters. The second layer provides communications between different VLC LEDs (VLC Light-emitting Diodes) and specific sub-gateway. The third layer enables communication between different sub-gateways and the service gateway using free space optical (FSO) transmission. Furthermore, issues related to VLC cell dimensioning, wavelengths management, access control and technology integration are discussed and some alternatives are proposed. Finally, several smart cities applications such as intelligent communication, event surveillance, and object tracking are demonstrated.