Overview

We are investigating a systems problem -- the adaptation of novel LED-based materials and devices for the support of visible-light-based communication and communications networking. By exploiting the ubiquity of future man-made lighting from solid state (LED) devices we anticipate ubiquitous network connectivity. Our research is directed at the intersection of networking, free-space optical communications, and the "anywhere" computing that they enable. Examples include supporting "trickle" data dissemination in sensor networks, achieving HD video streaming in high bandwidth-density scenarios such as aircraft seating, and improving vehicular safety via robust vehicle-to-vehicle communications.

More detailed information on the larger scope of this effort is found on the Smart Lighting Research sites:

• Boston University: Research in Smart Lighting and
• NSF Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center.

Related Publications

Free-Space-Optical Visible-Spectrum Communications

• A.M. Vegni and T.D.C. Little, "Handover in VLC Systems with Cooperating Mobile Devices," to appear in Proc. of Mobility and Communication for Cooperation and Coordination (MC3) Workshop, part of the IEEE Intl. Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC 2012), January 30 - February 2, 2012, Maui, Hawaii, USA. [pdf].
• T. Borogovac, M. Rahaim, M. Tuganbayeva, and T.D.C. Little, "'Lights-off' Visible Light Communications," Proc. IEEE Globecom 2011 2nd Workshop on Optical Wireless Communications (OWC 2011), pp. 823-827, Dec. 5-9, 2011, Houston TX, USA. [pdf].
• M. Rahaim, A.M. Vegni, and T.D.C. Little, "A Hybrid Radio Frequency and Broadcast Visible Light Communication System," Proc. IEEE Globecom 2011 2nd Workshop on Optical Wireless Communications (OWC 2011), pp. 818-822, Dec. 5-9, 2011, Houston TX, USA. [pdf].
• M. Rahaim, A. Mirvakili, T. Borogovac, T.D.C. Little, and V. Joyner, "Demonstration of a Software Defined Visible Light Communication System," Mobicom 2011, Poster and Demonstration Competition, September 2011. [pdf].
• Z. Wu, "Free Space Optical Networking with Visible Light: A Multi-Hop Multi-Access Solution," PhD Dissertation, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, September 2011. [pdf].
• Z. Wu, J. Chau, and T.D.C. Little, "Modeling and Designing of a New Indoor Free Space Visible Light Communication System," Proc. 16th European Conference on Networks and Optical Communications (NOC 2011), part of the 16th European Conference on Networks and Optical Communications & 6th Conference on Optical Cabling and Infrastructure, July 2011. [pdf].
• T.D.C. Little, A. Agarwal, J. Chau, M. Figueroa, A. Ganick, J. Lobo, T. Rich, P. Schimitsch, "Directional Communication System for Short-Range Vehicular Communications," Proc. 2nd IEEE Vehicular Networking Conf. (VNC 2010), Jersey City, December 15, 2010. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal and T.D.C. Little, "Role of Directional Wireless Communication in Vehicular Networks," in Proc. Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV'10), San Diego, CA, June 2010. [pdf].
• Z. Wu and T.D.C. Little, "Network Solutions for the LOS Problem of New Indoor Free Space Optical System," in Proc. IEEE, IEE Intl. Symp. on Communciations Systems, Networks, and Digital Signal Processing 2010, Newcastle, UK, July 2010. [pdf].
• A. Ganick, M. Figueroa, J. Lobo, P. Schimitsch, T. Rich, and T.D.C. Little, "Vehicular Networking Using Optical Transceivers," Poster and Demonstration Program, MobiSys 2010, San Francisco, CA, June 15, 2010. [pdf].
• J. Chau, K. Matarese, and T.D.C. Little, "IP-Enabled LED Lighting Supporting Indoor Mobile and Wireless Communications," Poster and Demonstration Program, MobiSys 2010, San Francisco, CA, June 15, 2010. [pdf].
• T.D.C. Little, P. Dib, K. Shah, N. Barraford, and B. Gallagher, "Using LED Lighting for Ubiquitous Indoor Wireless Networking," 4th IEEE Intl. Conf. on Wirless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob 2008), Avignon, France, October 2008 also as MCL Technical Report No. TR-05-20-2008, Multimedia Communications Laboratory, Boston University, Boston MA, May 2008. [pdf], and [gallery].

Context-Aware Lighting (Pervasive Computing)

• T.D.C. Little, "Ubiqutous Networking for Human Containers," Invited Presentation, NSF Workshop on Pervasive Computing at Scale (PeCS), Seattle, WA, January 2011. [pdf].
• T.D.C. Little, "Pervasive Adaptation: Research Agenda for Future and Emerging Technologies," Alois Ferscha (ed.) PerAda, 2011. [pdf].
• K. Wang, S. Abu Ayyash, T.D.C. Little, and P. Basu, "Attribute-Based Clustering for Information Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks," Proc. 2nd Annual IEEE Communications Society Conf. on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON 2005), Santa Clara, CA, Sept. 2005 [pdf].
• W. Ke, S.A. Ayyash, and T.D.C. Little, "Semantic Internetworking of Sensor Systems," Proc. 1st IEEE Intl. Conf. on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems, Fort Lauderdale, FL, October 2004 [pdf].
• P. Basu, W. Ke, and T.D.C. Little, "Modeling Distributed Applications for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks using Attributed Task Graphs," The Handbook of Mobile Computing, Eds. Imad Mahgoub and Mohammad Ilyas, CRC Press, 2004 [pdf].
• P. Basu, N. Khan, and T.D.C. Little, "A Mobility Based Metric for Clustering in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks," Proc. IEEE ICDCS 2001 Workshop on Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, Phoenix, AZ, April 2001 [pdf].
• P. Basu, W. Ke, and T.D.C. Little, "Metrics for Performance Evaluation of Distributed Application Execution in Ubiquitous Computing Environments," Position paper, Proc. ACM UbiComp 2001 Workshop on Evaluation Methodologies for Ubiquitous Computing, Atlanta, GA, September 2001 [pdf].

Applications of Vehicular Communications

• A.M. Vegni and T.D.C. Little, "Hybrid Vehicular Communications Based on V2V-V2I Protocol Switching," Intl. J. Vehicle Information and Communications Systems, Vol. 2, Nos. 3/4, pp. 213-231. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal, D. Starobinski, and T.D.C. Little, "Phase Transition of Message Propagation Speed in Delay-Tolerant Vehicular Networks," IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Issue 99, pp. 1-15, November 2011. [pdf].
• A. Mostafa, A.M. Vegni, R. Singoria, T. Oliveira, T.D.C. Little, and D.P. Agrawal, "A V2X-based approach for reduction of delay propagation in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks," Proc. Intl. Workshop on Seamless Connectivity in Vehicular Networks (SCVN 2011), part of the 11th IEEE International Conference on ITS Telecommunications (ITST 2011), Saint-Petersburg, Russia, August 23-25, 2011. [pdf].
• T.D.C. Little, A. Agarwal, J. Chau, M. Figueroa, A. Ganick, J. Lobo, T. Rich, P. Schimitsch, "Directional Communication System for Short-Range Vehicular Communications," Proc. 2nd IEEE Vehicular Networking Conf. (VNC 2010), Jersey City, December 15, 2010. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal and T.D.C. Little, "Role of Directional Wireless Communication in Vehicular Networks," in Proc. Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV'10), San Diego, CA, June 2010. [pdf].
• A.M. Vegni, C. Vegni, and T.D.C. Little, "Opportunistic Vehicular Networks by Satellite Links for Safety Applications," in Proc. of the Fully Networked Car Workshop, Geneva International Motor Show, Geneva, Switzerland, March 3-4, 2010. [pdf] Presentation [pdf].
• A.M. Vegni and T.D.C. Little, "A Message Propagation Model for Hybrid Vehicular Communication Protocols," in Proc. 2nd Intl. Workshop on Communication Technologies for Vehicles (Nets4Cars), in the 7th IEEE Int. Symp. on Communication Systems, Networks and DSP, (CSNDSP 2010), Newcastle, UK, July 2010. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal, "Analytical Modeling of Delay-Tolerant Data Dissemination in Vehicular Networks," PhD Dissertation, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, April 2010. [pdf].
• A.M. Vegni, "Multimedia Mobile Communications in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks," PhD Dissertation, Department of Applied Electronics, Roma Tre University, March 8, 2010. Part 1 [pdf], Part 2 [pdf].
• A. Ganick, M. Figueroa, J. Lobo, P. Schimitsch, T. Rich, and T.D.C. Little, "Vehicular Networking Using Optical Transceivers," Poster and Demonstration Program, MobiSys 2010, San Francisco, CA, June 15, 2010. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal and T.D.C. Little, "Impact of Asymmetric Traffic Densities on Delay Tolerant Vehicular Networks," in Proc. 1st IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC-2009), Tokyo, Japan, October 2009. [pdf], presentation [pdf].
• A. Agarwal and T.D.C. Little, "Opportunistic Networking in Delay Tolerant Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks," in M. Watfa (Ed.) Advances in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks: Developments and Challenges, IGI Global, 2009. (Book chapter) (to appear) [pdf].
• A. Agarwal, "PhD Forum: Routing Protocol and Performance Modeling in Delay Tolerant Vehicular Networks," in Proc. 17th IEEE Intl. Conf. on Networking Protocols (ICNP-2009), Princeton, NJ, October 2009. [pdf], presentation [pdf].
• A. Agarwal and T.D.C. Little, "Access Point Placement in Vehicular Networking," in Proc. 1st Intl. Conf. on Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) 2008, Troy, MI. December 2008. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal, D. Starobinski and Thomas D.C. Little, "Phase Transition Behavior of Message Propagation in Delay Tolerant Vehicular Ad hoc Networks," MCL Technical Report TR-12-12-2008, December 2008. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal, D Starobinski, and T.D.C. Little, "Analytical Model for Message Propagaion in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks," Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf. 2008, Singapore, May 2008. [pdf].
• T.D.C. Little and A. Agarwal "Connecting Vehicles to 'The Grid'," Proc. NITRD National Workshop on High-Confidence Automotive Cyber-Physical Systems, April 3-4, 2008, Troy, MI. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal, D Starobinski, and T.D.C. Little, "Exploiting Downstream Mobility to Achieve Fast Upstream Message Propagation in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks," Proc. Mobile Networking for Vehicular Environments 2007, Infocom 2007, Anchorage, AK, May 2007. [pdf].
• A. Agarwal and T.D.C. Little, "Prospects for Networked Vehicles of the Future," Proc. Workshop on Smart Transportation, 13th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, Bellevue, WA, April 2007. [pdf].