Illumination, data transmission, and energy harvesting: the threefold advantage of VLC.

Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology that meets illumination and information transmission requirements in an indoor environment. Because light waves convey energy, a VLC link may exploit that fact for energy harvesting purposes. In this context, a single light emitting diode lamp located at a close distance over a tablet or laptop PC can potentially offer simultaneous lighting, Internet access, and battery recharging without cables.

Maximizing Spectral Efficiency for Energy Harvesting-Aware WBAN.

In this paper, we investigate the spectral efficiency of a communication link in a wireless body area network (WBAN) capable of harvesting energy from the environment. We consider two scenarios for the transmission which are single- and dual-hop and achieve the power management policy for each scenario. In the first scenario, the aim is to maximize the link's spectral efficiency over N time slots subject to the battery capacity, energy harvesting constraint, and WBAN limitations including power and outage probability.