VLC offers significant technical and operational advantages and a wide range of application areas. It is one of the most promising current areas of research with a significant potential for high-impact results and successful outcomes, which might revolutionize utilization of LEDs for modern infrastructures to add novel functionalities in addition to illumination.
Despite the great potentials, VLC still remains a relatively less explored topic so far. However, this is changing rapidly with the growing attention from both academic and industrial communities worldwide. Having recognized the significance of this emerging area, within various research groups, in Europe and other parts of the world, researchers working in wireless RF or optical (fibre) communications areas have already started moving their research focus to the VLC domain.
Therefore, there is a particular lack of investment in training research talents who will lead this promising research area to the next level.
Research in VLC requires the training of personnel with a solid understanding of optical communications and photonics along devices / subsystems with a background on wireless communications, information theory, and physical and upper layer protocols. Furthermore, optical transmission in an unguided medium brings along unique challenges and requires a good understanding of the light sources, modulation/coding, and channel modelling and characterization for efficient transceiver design.
The proposed “European Training Network on Visible-light based Interoperability and Networking (VisIoN)” aims to train a new generation of early-stage researchers (ESRs) in the emerging area of VLC. Through research on co-supervised individual projects focusing on selected applications, VisIoN will make significant contributions to the fundamental scientific understanding and technical knowhow. Targeted application areas include indoor and outdoor VLC access, smart transportation, and medical and manufacturing environments.
In addition to technical training through PhD courses, dedicated tutorials, and workshops organized by the Network, the ESRs will benefit from a wide range of complementary non-technical training activities such as entrepreneurship, authoring scientific papers/patents, dissemination, etc. The participation of industrial partners will further promote research training with commercialization perspectives enabling ESRs to fully integrate theory with hands-on practice.
Research
The distinctive feature of VisIoN is the interdisciplinary nature of its intended research focus synergizing wireless communication technologies and optical communications. The proposed research programme builds upon 3 key technical Work packages (WPs) will deliver a proof-of-concept demonstrator for each WP.
