Connecting Battery-free IoT Tags Using LED Bulbs

Abstract

We introduce BackVLC, a system to connect battery-free IoT tags using LED bulbs. We make use of bulbs beyond illumination. We send data to the tags with visible light communication (VLC), and retrofit the bulbs with simple circuitry to enable the uplink channel current VLC systems lack, using Radio Frequency (RF) backscatter communication from the tags. Tags process and send data, harvesting energy from light and radio. We present our system design and implementation, evaluate it in preliminary simulation studies and experiments, and discuss the research challenges to develop a complete network architecture. BackVLC is the first work that combines VLC with RF backscatter.