Connected lighting drives rapid growth of smart building application market

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Connected lighting will receive and transmit information through Internet connection, which will make lighting devices smarter, more energy-saving and easier to manage.

Combined with visible light communication (VLC) technology, it will provide indoor positioning function, making its application wider, and the market space for growth will be enormous. This article will show you the development of related technologies of connected lighting, as well as the product features and advantages of the NCL310xx intelligent LED driver introduced by onsemi.

The global connected lighting market has great development potential

As the name implies, connected lighting is a lighting device that can be connected to the Internet, which can also be called smart lighting. Lighting devices can be connected through the Internet to carry out remote lighting management, which is one of the basic functions of smart buildings. This will allow more efficient power use and enable smarter building management by integrating a variety of sensors (room occupancy, temperature, humidity, CO/CO2 …) and addressing via LED, PoE and KNX devices to manage using each room in the building more effectively.

According to the market survey, the global smart lighting market will grow from about $8.9 billion in 2020 to an estimated $28.9 billion by 2027, with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.3%. Depending on the source and timetable, the CAGR will be between 15 and 30%, with great market development potential.

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Visible light-based data communication technology

In fact, visible light communication (VLC) is not a new technology. VLC technology was introduced in the Bell Labs as early as the 1880s, with a history earlier than radio and visible frequencies ranging from 400 THz (wavelength 780 nm) to 800 THz (wavelength 375 nm). VLC is a data communication technology using visible light as the carrier with a low data transmission rate (kb/s).

Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) is a kind of information transmission on the Internet using VLC. Generally speaking, Li-Fi takes various visible light sources as signal emission sources, and controls the on-off of the lights through the controller, thus controlling communication between the light sources and the terminal receiver. Li-Fi is a VLC form that allows a two-way transmission of light. The difference is that it does not use radio spectrum, but is controlled by LED lamps equipped with special chips, and uses visible spectrum to transmit data.

Li-Fi has a high bandwidth (its bandwidth is 10,000 times that of Wi-Fi) transmission capacity. When white LED is used within a distance of 5 meters (16 feet), the speed is 500 Mbit/s, and when five LEDs are used under laboratory conditions, the speed is 100 Mbit/s at a longer distance, and it features high security (information of indoor computers and mobile terminals will not be leaked to the outside) and energy saving functions. Although the Li-Fi lamp must be kept on to transmit data, the lamp can be dimmed to the point where people can't see it on while it continues to transmit data.

In addition, the VLC technology can also be used for indoor positioning, and the dimming function (controlled by MCU) is used to transmit data. Because the average LED output current is maintained, signals that cannot be detected by human eyes are loaded. When external receivers (smart phones, tablets, etc.) are used, the image sensor on the mobile phone or tablet can receive and read data, and then the mobile phone processor can be used to calculate the position information. On the other hand, at present, some lamps can transmit signals by adopting the Yellow Dot communication protocol and defining the VLC scheme of PWM frequency, duty ratio and symbol rate.

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VLC technology supporting positioning function

Compared with radio frequency wireless communication technology, VLC has higher anti-interference ability, is not sensitive to reflection (suitable for metal environment), and will not be affected by nearby radio frequency transmitters, nor will it affect other communication systems. It is more suitable for fields sensitive to electromagnetic interference, such as airplanes, hospitals and fields with explosion risks, and has scalability. The communication channel will not be saturated due to the use of a large number of receiving devices, and it has higher security. It is essentially limited to communication within the line-of-sight range (not travel through walls), and can be positioned based on the light sources. In addition, the complexity of VLC system is relatively low, without additional power amplifier and signal chain, which can reduce power consumption and design complexity.

To use VLC for indoor positioning, you can first set a unique ID for each LED lamp and arrange and indicate the location of the lamp in the building. The LED can then send a signal to the receiver end via VLC. The receiver receives the signal and decodes and calculates the position information. The receiver can be a camera lens (module) or photodiode with accuracy of 15 cm.

For example, take the indoor positioning of mobile robots with VLC, whose positioning accuracy can reach dozens of centimeters and resist RF interference. Because signals are confined to the interior of buildings, they are intrinsically safe, and instructions can be transmitted in one-way through the lamp network and can be transmitted in both directions through an enhanced existing RF infrastructure. When positioning, the position and unique ID of the lamp will be included in the floor plan database, and the lamp will continuously transmit its unique ID, and the optical sensor or camera module of the robot will capture the ID, and the robot will then apply the trigonometric principle to positioning.

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Intelligent LED driver series supporting VLC

Optimistic about the development of the smart building market, onsemi introduced the NCL310xx intelligent LED driver series, which integrates the communication interface, system power supply, LED driver and metering function into one chip. The NCL310xx intelligent LED driver aims at high efficiency, single-channel or multi-channel and connected lighting applications.

The NCL310xx series is highly integrated and provides two auxiliary DC-DC converters to power microcontrollers, sensors and other peripheral devices, including accurate measurement for measuring and reporting input and output current and voltage, LED temperature and DC-DC voltage. A full range of fault protection and diagnosis can cover safety of devices, applications and users.

The NCL310xx series consists of NCL31000 with integrated DC-DC converter, NCL31001 with DC-DC converter removed for multi-channel applications, and NCL31010 with integrated IEEE802.bt PD(90W). Among them, the NCL31000 series features connectivity, integration, control and positioning features, designed for PoE, with VLC, supporting RF/MCU connectivity (SPI/I2C serial interface), integrating 97% efficient LED driver, 3.3V buck converter, adjustable buck converter at 2.5-24V, supporting power metering, having advanced optical engine control capability, truly dimmable to darkness, and allowing color mixing and environmental setting through multi-channel features. The accuracy of indoor positioning is within 30 cm, enabling VLC and communication with mobile phones.

The NCL310xx intelligent LED driver series has a wide input voltage range from 21.5 V to 57 V, and is suitable for proprietary 100 W+ applications. It integrates a 3.3 V buck converter (NCL31000 only), an adjustable 2.5-24 V buck converter (NCL31000 only), and an efficient buck LED driver. It supports the adjustable switching frequency from 44.4 kHz to 1 MHz, uses an internal precision 2.4 V reference, and can dim to zero with 0.1% accuracy. It also has first-class linearity, a high modulation bandwidth of ~50 kHz, supports VLC capability and is compatible with Yellow Dot.

During the re-flashing (warm boot) of the microcontroller, the NCL310xx can be independently controlled by the internal DIM DAC, with low EMI reference design, I2C/SPI interface, and high-precision diagnosis function for measuring voltage/current. prevention of LED short circuit and open circuit, support of LED overvoltage/undervoltage and overcurrent protection, chip overcurrent protection, chip and LED over-temperature protection, and junction temperature range of 40°C to+125°C, and a 48-pin QFN 7x 7 package is available. These devices are Pb-free and RoHS compliant.

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Dual-channel solution that meets VLC requirements

NCL31000 is a new member of onsemi LED driver series, which is specially designed for lighting applications. It is very suitable for VLC and management lighting systems, and can handle 100W+ applications. It integrates IEEE802.3bt certified PoE-PD interface and high-efficiency buck LED driver, and supports high linearity, high bandwidth analog and digital dimming and low to zero current PWM dimming.

NCL31000 includes an integrated fixed 3.3V DC-DC and an adjustable DC-DC converter. The diagnostic module includes an ADC, which can measure input and LED output current, voltage, LED temperature, DC/DC voltage and current. Fast security mechanism can protect the key modules of the chip, and can be used together with diagnostic measurement with flexible status reporting and interrupt mechanism. NCL31001 is the same as NCL31000, except that it does not include two DC-DC converters. The combination of NCL31000 and NCL31001 is an ideal choice for dual-channel solution.

NCL310xx intelligent LED driver series can be widely used in the following; outdoor lighting, building lighting, indoor lighting, office lighting, industrial lighting, theater lighting, medical lighting, multi-channel management lighting in greenhouse agriculture, display data (e-ink price tag, LED displays) in displays, backlights for professional and high-end displays, and in hazardous environments. When performing indoor positioning, VLC can locate assets and products, guide customers and passengers, and assist warehouse automation and automatic guided vehicle positioning.

onsemi has also introduced an intelligent LED driver evaluation kit with PoE interface - NCL31010GEVK, which supports IEEE 802.3bt. It also has high-efficiency active bridge, Class 6/60W LED driving capability, RJ45 data straight-through connector, communication and control interface, and supports EMI/EMC optimization. The evaluation kit includes the reference design of intelligent LED driver with PoE interface of NCL31010REFGEVB (1-inch form factor), the expansion board of Arduino adapter of PoE LED driver of NCL31010AASGEVB and the loop-through Ethernet cable (RJ45).

Conclusion

In addition to smart building applications that are easier to manage and save energy, connected lighting devices that use VLC technology to transmit information also offer indoor positioning function and have excellent information security, with tremendous market development potential. NCL310xx intelligent LED driver series introduced by onsemi can be widely used in indoor and outdoor connected lighting applications, which is worthy of further understanding by manufacturers interested in investing in related product development.

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