Lighting the Way for a Sustainable Future: Overcoming Challenges in Light-Based IoT and Data-Energy Networking

The emergence of white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as the dominant source of indoor lighting has opened new avenues for establishing communication networks within indoor environments. This article examines the potential role of indoor LED luminaires, which serve not only as sources of illumination but also as a means for providing energy to self-powered nodes in addition to facilitating optical wireless communication (OWC) among distributed sensor nodes. It highlights the potential of integrating these LED-based communication networks with photovoltaic (PV) energy harvesting (EH), paving the way for energy-autonomous, light-based Internet of Things (LIoT) ecosystems that embrace sustainable technologies. The challenges of deploying such networks, including the dynamic nature of indoor visible light communication (VLC) channels, are critically examined. Our proposal presents a novel methodology that integrates a centralized controller with artificial intelligence algorithms and the directional properties of OWC. This approach improves autonomous network uptime and data communication efficiency through novel collaborative data and energy networking in synergy. Our approach aims to mitigate the inherent challenges of indoor VLC systems, offering a road map toward sustainable, efficient, and intelligent autonomous indoor communication networks.