Joint illumination and visible-Light Communication systems: Data rates and extra power consumption

Visible Light Communications (VLC) have been promoted as an energy-efficient Gb/s-technology for indoor settings, since VLC can be merged with the illumination functionality. As a result, Joint Illumination and visible-light Communication (JIC) systems are perceived as a green technology and the research on VLC mainly focuses on increasing the data rates. In this paper, we demonstrate that the communication functionality of JIC systems comes always with an extra power consumption compared to illumination-only systems due to fundamental limitations in the LED sources operation. Furthermore, our analysis shows that apart from the LED sources, the extra power consumption of JIC systems depends on the illumination pattern and the JIC drivers. Finally, by examining jointly the maximum transmission rates (communication capacity) of JIC systems and their power consumption, we are able to judge their power efficiency compared to other competing technologies and determine potential application areas.