Connected lighting drives the rapid growth of smart building application market
Connected lighting will receive and transmit information through an internet connection, which will make lighting fixtures smarter, more energy efficient, and easier to manage. Combined with visible light communication (VLC) te chnology, it will provide indoor positioning functions, making it more widely used, and the market has huge room for growth. This article will demonstrate the development of technologies related to connected lighting, as well as the product features and advantages of the NCL310xx smart LED drivers from ON Semiconductor.
The global interconnected lighting market has great potential for development
As the name suggests, connected lighting is a lighting device that can be connected to the Internet, and it can also be called smart lighting. Lighting equipment can be connected through the Internet for remote lighting management, which is one of the basic functions of smart buildings. This will allow more efficient management of the use of each room in the building by integrating various sensors (room occupancy, temperature, humidity, CO/CO2...) and addressing through LEDs, PoE and KNX devices, the result is more efficient power usage and smarter building management.
According to market research, the global smart lighting market will grow from approximately USD 8.9 billion in 2020 to an estimated USD 28.9 billion in 2027, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.3%. Depending on the source and schedule, the compound annual growth rate will be between 15% and 30%, and the market has great potential for development.
In fact, visible light communication (VLC) is not a new technology. Bell Labs introduced VLC technology back in the 1880s, predating radio and visible light frequencies ranging from 400THz (wavelength 780 nm) to 800THz (wavelength 375 nm). VLC is a data communication technology with low data transmission rate (kb/s) based on visible light.
Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) is a way to use VLC for information transmission on the Internet. Generally speaking, Li-Fi uses various visible light sources as signal transmission sources, and the controller controls the on and off of the lights, thereby controlling the communication between the light source and the terminal receiver. Li-Fi is a form of VLC that allows the transmission of light in both directions. The difference is that instead of using the radio spectrum, it is controlled by LED lights fitted with special chips that transmit data using the visible spectrum.
Li-Fi has high bandwidth (its bandwidth is 10,000 times that of Wi-Fi) transmission capability. 500 Mbit/s at a distance of 5 m (16 ft) using white LEDs and 100 Mbit/s at greater distances using five LEDs under laboratory conditions with high security (indoor Computer and mobile terminal information will not be leaked outside) and energy-saving functions. While the Li-Fi light must remain on to transmit data, the light can be dimmed so low that people cannot see it while continuing to transmit data.
In addition, VLC technology can also be used for indoor positioning, dimming function (controlled by MCU) for data transmission. Since the average LED output current is maintained, it is loaded with a signal that cannot be detected by the human eye. When using an external receiver (smartphone, tablet, etc.), the image sensor on the phone or tablet can receive and read the data, and then the location information is calculated by the phone processor. On the other hand, at present, some lamps can use the yellow dot communication protocol, which defines the PWM frequency, duty cycle, and symbol rate VLC scheme to transmit signals.
Smart LED driver series supporting VLC
Optimistic about the development of the smart building market, onsemi has launched the NCL310xx smart LED driver series, which integrates communication interface, system power supply, LED driver and metering functions into one chip. The NCL310xx smart LED drivers are designed for high efficiency, single or multi-channel and connected lighting applications.
The NCL310xx series is highly integrated and provides two auxiliary DC-DC converters to power microcontrollers, sensors and other peripherals, including precise measurements for measuring and reporting input and output current and voltage, LED temperature and DC-DC voltage. Comprehensive fault protection and diagnostics covering the safety of equipment, applications and users.
The NCL310xx series includes NCL31000 with integrated DC-DC converter, NCL31001 with DC-DC converter removed for multi-channel applications, and NCL31010 with integrated IEEE802.bt PD(90W). Among them, the NCL31000 series has connection, integration, control and positioning features, designed for PoE, has VLC, supports RF/MCU connection (SPI/I2C serial interface), integrates 97% efficient LED driver, 3.3V step-down converter, adjustable step-down 2.5-24V converter, supports power metering, has advanced optical engine control capability, true dimmable to dark, and allows color mixing and ambient setting through multi-channel function. The indoor positioning accuracy is within 30cm, which can realize VLC and mobile phone communication.
The NCL310xx smart LED driver family features a wide input voltage range of 21.5 V to 57 V for proprietary 100 W+ applications. It integrates a 3.3 V step-down converter (NCL31000 only), an adjustable 2.5-24 V step-down converter (NCL31000 only), and a high-efficiency step-down LED driver. It supports an adjustable switching frequency from 44.4 kHz to 1 MHz, uses an internal precision 2.4 V reference, and can dim to zero with 0.1% accuracy. It also features best-in-class linearity, a high modulation bandwidth of around 50 kHz, supports VLC functionality, and is compatible with Yellow Dot.
The NCL310xx can be independently controlled by the internal DIM DAC during microcontroller reflashing (warm boot), has a low EMI reference design, I2C/SPI interface, and high-precision diagnostics for measuring voltage/current. Prevent LED short circuit and open circuit, support LED overvoltage/undervoltage and overcurrent protection, chip overcurrent protection, chip and LED overtemperature protection, junction temperature range 40°C to +125°C, 48 pins provide QFN 7x 7 package. These devices are lead-free and RoHS compliant.