Introduction
This whitepaper explores the rapidly maturing smart lighting market and examines some of the motivations driving consumers toward home automation. It also looks at the specific design challenges that come with wireless lighting connectivity and how developers are addressing growing demand with the latest technology.
Contents:
- Reimagining the Light Bulb
- The Advantages of Smart Lighting
- Emerging Market Trends
- Design Requirements
- Application Areas
Reimagining the Light Bulb
It's been nearly 140 years since Thomas Edison filed his first patent for "Improvement in Electric Lights," which described using a carbon filament as an incandescent conductor to limit heat. From those days, when a chief design concern was not having your prototype burst into flames, to today, when lighting is virtually taken for granted, much has changed.
One of the most disruptive advances in lighting since Edison's breakthrough has been the invention of the LED. Today's LEDs, particularly connected LEDs, offer added functionality like color options and significant energy savings by emitting more lumens per watt than traditional incandescent bulbs. The energy efficiency of LEDs is not impeded by size. However, this control comes with a new layer of complexity for users due to required connectivity.
Imagine coming home from work and the lights turn on before you enter, or bedroom lighting that gradually wakes you up in the morning. A stylized lightbulb cut open reveals a printed circuit board with electronic components, representing smart lighting technology.
Today, LED lighting is a $30 billion global industry, but it hasn't fully crossed into mainstream adoption. Currently, colored connected bulbs cost around $50 each, and the average US home has 40 sockets, making a full home upgrade nearly $2,000. However, prices are decreasing; standard LED bulbs dropped from $25 in 2014 to around $2 today. This price settlement creates an opportunity for vendors to differentiate.
The Advantages of Connected Lighting
The primary benefits driving the adoption of connected lighting are convenience, intelligence, and data analytics. Lighting is a powerful environmental factor influencing daily life. In an office, static fluorescent lighting is good for reading but not ideal for computer work. Adjustable ambient lighting can tailor the light to the task. Smart lighting, with intelligence and sensors, offers insights into occupancy data, room conditions (temperature), and traffic patterns. Smart LEDs can also provide analytics related to location and space utilization, helping determine building area usage or warehouse efficiency.
The average US home has 40 sockets, and connected, color bulbs cost around $50 each.
Most people will ease into smart lighting by installing a few connected LEDs. Beyond changing light output, smart lighting and connectivity offer benefits like wireless monitoring and control for energy usage management. Intelligence and data analytics provide real-time energy consumption views, mobile control, and features like occupancy and ambient condition sensors, allowing environments to respond automatically. Occupancy, ambient light, and temperature sensors enable more intelligent lighting control, with turning off lights when rooms are empty being just one example.
Location-based lighting is an emerging convenience, using lights to determine location or occupancy. Lights suggest activities and people gather where lights are. Since lights are typically spaced evenly in industrial, commercial, and outdoor locations, they can indicate people's locations. Use cases include integrating location-based capabilities for preventive maintenance by checking light status and location, or using technologies like sensors or Bluetooth® beaconing to determine a single person's location.
Aggregating data over time and space can determine space utilization efficiency in warehouses, supermarkets, or parking lots. Retailers can use this data to promote products based on shopper location.
A line graph titled "Driving Down the Cost Curve" shows the projected decrease in LED bulb costs from 2010 to 2040, compared to Compact Fluorescent and Incandescent bulbs. The graph indicates a significant drop in LED costs.
Emerging Market Trends
In 2014, standard (non-connected) LED bulbs cost $25 each, and today the price has dropped to around $2 each.
Security is becoming an issue for IoT devices, including lighting. A system is only as good as its weakest link, and security should be a process, not an end-of-development feature. Engineers often focus on functionality, potentially overlooking security. A strong, systematic approach is needed.
Tools exist to enhance smart lighting security. The challenge is using technology correctly. For example, turning off security features in Bluetooth or ZigBee chips can simplify development and ease debugging, potentially lowering costs. However, this can lead to long-term costs that far exceed short-term benefits. Another mistake is not closing debugging interfaces, making chips transparent to end-users. Chip designers and manufacturers share responsibility for security. Currently, there are few incentives for taking on more than perceived share of the load. High-profile attacks lead to loss of revenue, brand damage, and critically, loss of consumer trust, which can reduce market adoption. Insecure devices may trigger regulation.
A quote highlights: "When high-profile attacks happen, the fallout goes far beyond the loss of revenue. More damning is the loss of customer trust." An illustration of multiple green checkmarks on a dark background symbolizes security and successful implementation.
Design Requirements and Flavors of Multiprotocol Connectivity
Key high-level requirements for smart lighting systems include: Low Cost, Small Size, Long Product Life, Strict Regulatory Requirements, High Operating Temp. (125° C), Future Proof (Over-the-Air Updates), Secure, and Flexible Connectivity (Multiprotocol).
Multiprotocol compatibility is a differentiator, enhancing user experience and use cases, such as Bluetooth commissioning for ZigBee or running ZigBee, Thread, and Bluetooth simultaneously.
Programmable Multiprotocol: A chipset that, with the right software stack, can run multiple wireless protocols. This allows manufacturers to streamline hardware design and address different markets by programming chips with various protocol support.
Switched Multiprotocol: The ability to change the supported wireless protocol by bootloading a new firmware image when the device is deployed. This enables future-proofing and simplifies commissioning using smartphone connectivity for ZigBee, Thread, and other networks. A diagram illustrates this with icons for Bluetooth and Mesh, showing a timeline with a Bootloader step of 10-15 seconds.
Dynamic Multiprotocol: Running multiple wireless protocols on one chip using time-slicing to share the radio. This enables use cases like periodic Bluetooth beacons from devices operating on ZigBee or Thread.
Multiprotocol Connectivity in Action
An example is using Bluetooth beacons for proximity-aware applications in retail lighting networks. ZigBee-enabled fixtures can transmit Bluetooth beacons periodically, allowing location determination and information transmission. A screenshot shows a mobile application interface for 'Thread Networks', with icons for Bluetooth and Zigbee. A diagram illustrates 'Beacon Interval' with a timeline showing a 100 ms interval for beacons, reconfiguring radio, and mesh routers.
Concurrent Multiprotocol: A special type of Dynamic multiprotocol where protocols share the same MAC and PHY (e.g., ZigBee and Thread on IEEE 802.15.4 2.4GHz). This allows running both stacks on one device, as the radio is always available, avoiding packet loss during switching. However, bandwidth sharing means protocols cannot be received simultaneously, though collision avoidance mechanisms apply.
Simultaneous Multiprotocol: True simultaneous operation, especially across different radio frequencies, requires two radios. This is valuable for applications and networking stacks operating across two radios or frequency ranges. An example is Smart Metering in Great Britain, deploying dual PHY ZigBee hubs that support both 2.4GHz and sub-GHz ZigBee devices on the same logical PAN.
Application Areas
Smart lighting is gaining momentum in several areas: the consumer market, commercial applications (retail, healthcare), and municipal use (streetlights). Each area presents unique design challenges and requirements.
The Smart Home: This area involves automated and smart lighting solutions, leveraging low-power MCUs, wireless technologies, and mesh networking standards like ZigBee and Thread.
The Smart Building: Connected, energy-efficient LED lighting can generate substantial energy savings, personalize workspaces, and optimize manufacturing by using multiple wireless protocols, including ZigBee, Thread, and Bluetooth.
The Smart City: Smart lighting can enhance safety, reduce energy costs, and encourage community engagement. It involves managing the complexity of scale and multiple vendors.
