ROLLOUT AND STANDARDIZATION
From our point of view, optical wireless will
increasingly complement radio in the future.
Hybrid technologies, involving the use of unified
wireless data protocols and link management,
will accordingly play a significant role.
An important aspect of rollout in the poten-tial application scenarios is a low-cost network
behind VLC. For existing indoor environments,
it is intuitive to use the power lines to the room
lighting as a network infrastructure, in order to
accelerate deployment and reduce costs. For
extending the already existing power line communications
(PLC) technology with VLC, amplify-
and-forward or decode-and-forward strategies
are of interest. On the other hand, for new
installations, plastic optical fibers (POF) are
considered promising, as they provide improved
data security. VLC could be combined with an
optical backhaul, paving the way for future alloptical
wireless solutions.