Integration of Indoor Visible Light and Power Line Communication Systems

With the recent successful standardization of broadband power line communication (PLC) (IEEE 1901, ITU-T G.9960/61) and visible light communication (VLC) (IEEE 802.15.7), there is an excellent opportunity to consider their integration. In particular, there is inherent benefit to leveraging existing power line infrastructure to provide connectivity while exploiting energy-efficient LED illumination systems for wireless downlink. The ubiquity of LED lighting together with power line networks leads us to conclude that VLC will be a strong complementary wireless technology to indoor PLC much in the way that Wi-Fi currently supports broadband Ethernet connections. This paper will survey some aspects of both PLC and VLC and present new proposals for their integration.