A study on the performance factors for wireless
lighting control networks
Dae Ho Kim, Jung Sik Sung, Seonghee Park, Tae-Gyu Kang,
Hyper-connected Communication Research Laboratory
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
Daejeon, Republic of Korea
{dhkim7256, jssung, pshee, tgkang}@etri.re.kr
Abstract— Modern lighting control system is heralding a radical
change since the development of LED lighting and the
universalization of Internet. An advanced lighting system is
started to be controlled anywhere anytime without being
constrained in time and space through internet, and can be
automatically controlled depending on the ambient light
environment. In addition, range of lighting controls began to be
fine as a single unit lighting in the room, and it began to use
wireless communication instead of wired communication
technologies described for the individual lighting control.
However, the number of lights to be controlled is too many and
dense. In this paper, we summarized the considerations of
lighting control system using wireless technology and lighting
elements that should be considered by applying the ad hoc mode
or infrastructure mode of wireless communication technology.
Keywords — wireless lighting control system, MANET, LED
lighting, performance requirements.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays we can easily found LED lightings around us.
LED lighting is widely used and most popular light source
because it has a long life time and more safety features and
especially it consumes also less energy compared to
incandescent and fluorescent lamp. Additional advantage is an
easy control feature. LED lighting is possible to control even
brightness, color, as well as communication, such as visible
light communication (VLC). Due to these reasons, LED
lighting is becoming the object of control and communication.
In order to control the lighting, traditionally it had to be
connected to all the lights in a wired and installation cost is
very expensive. In recent years, as the wireless
communications technology get cheaper and reliable, the
efforts to control the lighting by using a wireless
communication technology has increased. However, the
wireless lighting network is different with a conventional
wireless network environment. The nodes are concentrated,
dense, sensitive to delay, and do not move. We connected 128
ZigBee lighting to study these characteristics [1], it also has to
control 24 Wi-Fi lighting in same unit space.
In this paper, first we will study the characteristics of the
lighting control network, and present the elements to be
considered when applying wireless technologies. Especially we
This work was supported by LED System Lighting R&D program of
KEIT, [10053787, Development of LED system lighting commercializing
technologies on unit area based on scalable general purpose lighting devices].
978-1-5090-1325-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
will study about the possible issues when MANET technology
is applied to the lighting control networks.
In section 2, we survey the history of lighting control
technology. In section 3, we study on the performance factors
for wireless lighting control network. Some factors are also
important as conventional wireless communication network,
but others not.
II. HISTORY OF LIGHTING CONTROL NETWORK
A. 1 generartion : Dimmer and Switch
st
Since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1879,
humans started to control the light. With the development of
low voltage analog dimmer using SCR (Silicon-controlled
rectifier) in the 1960s, people became able to control the
brightness of the light [2].
Dimmers are devices used to change the brightness of a
light. By changing the output voltage waveform of dimmer,
such as 0-15V DC, 0-24V AC, 0-10V DC, and so on, applied
to the lamp, it is possible to change intensity of the light output.
For example, in 0-10V DC, the control signal is a DC voltage
that varies between zero and ten volts by user control. The
controlled lighting should change its light output power when
control signal is 10 V, output power of the controlled light
should be 100%, and when 0 V, it should 0% output which
means off. 0-10V is an American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) E1.3 “Entertainment Technology - Lighting Control
System - 0 to 10V Analog Control Protocol” standard.
These analog dimming control method had a serious
disadvantage. To control the each lightings separately, more
dimmers and wires are equipped to control because these
cannot be shared.
B. 2nd generation : Data Communication
As the number of lightings we have to control increases, it
makes difficult to control effectively the lighting system, with
only the technique using the dimmers or switches. So, the
multiplexing technology through a single transmission circuit
has been devised so that the lighting system with multiple
luminaires can be controlled easily and effectively.
This technology is well known as analog multiplex (AMX)
and digital multiplex (DMX) technology, depending upon the
type of multiplexed signal. In other words, AMX transmits the
906 ICTC 2016
multiplexed analog control signal for multiple controlling,
while DMX transmits the multiplexed digital control data.
Especially, DMX512 being widely used to date is the most
successful and popular technology in the lighting control
network industry. DMX512 technology has been originated
from the area of entertainment and theater lighting system, and
their standardization has been done by the organization, called
the PLASA (Professional Lighting and Sound Association) [3].
Figure 1. DALI lighting control network
Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) which can
share the transmission media and control up to 64 control gears
as shown in Figure 1, is also a famous data protocol and
transport mechanism that is widely used at the area of office
lighting system. DALI standard began to be described in
appendix (Annex E) for digital light control of the fluorescent
ballast at IEC 60929 standard. It became IEC 62386 standard in
2009 formally.
C. 3rd generation : Wireless and Internet
Now a days, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been hot issue,
as smart products such the Nest thermostat captivated
consumers. In the IoT, everyday objects are outfitted with
sensors, microprocessors, and the ability to talk to other
machines over a local system. Lamp is no exception.
Not all lamps in the network may have to be connected and
controlled individually, but each lamp may be equipped with
its own wireless communication module to avoid re-cabling in
ceilings of old buildings [4] and may be controlled to save
energy. With the increasing number of more and more light,
users' comfort needs and demands are increasing.
III. PERFORMANCE FACTORS FOR WIRELESS LIGHTING
CONTROL NETWORK
When we configure the lighting control network by using a
wireless communication technology, we can select one of ad-
hoc mode and infrastructure mode. In this section we define the
elements to be considered in designing the wireless lighting
control system at the two modes.
A. Latency
Low latency is one of the most important factor for a
performance evaluation items of the lighting control system.
The user can feel more comfortable when a reaction of lighting
by user control is immediately occurred. In generally, the user
expects a system response within a few hundred milliseconds
with low packet loss rates (PLR). Major requirements for an
indoor lighting control network are a latency of less than
200ms and a PLR below 1% [5].
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Especially for large-scale stage lighting a fast response time
is required. For example, a DMX512 using the EIA-485 to the
physical layer has a minimum delay of 23ms by sending 8 bits
control data per node and DMX512 is available up to 512
nodes. Each node receives a new 8 bits data every 23ms.
Figure 2. 24 Wi-Fi lighting test bed for lighting control
In the MANET, latency is closely related to the hop count
of the number of nodes. It is a method that can minimize the
delay to minimize the hop count.
B. Packet loss rate
Figure 2 is configured to look Wi-Fi lighting network
operating in infrastructure mode. Each Wi-Fi lighting has an
auto connection function to scheduler which is a main
controller with a smart lighting control function: function to
obtain the IP address of the scheduler by using the broadcasting,
function to allocate lighting control ID from the scheduler and
function to exchange the lighting capabilities which are
dimming, color, sensor, and so on. All lightings and a
scheduler to perform these auto connection function will
exchange simultaneously a scheduler searching message, a
lighting ID allocation request message, connection request
message and response messages.
In this test, we confirmed that the congestion occurs, and
that a packet loss occurs due to operation at the same time
connected to the scheduler. We have to minimize the packet
losses by lowering the possibility of a simultaneous connection
by adding random delay when all lighting try to connect to
scheduler. This packet loss is an important performance
element in the lighting control network because it occurs the
additional delay due to the retransmission of packet.
C. Number of nodes
Lighting has a characteristic which is concentrated in the
narrow space. So, one controller often needs to control several
tens to several hundreds of light. The building lighting control
system has to manage the thousands of lights. For example,
LED system lighting R&D program which supports this work
has to control more than 5,000 lamps which are connected with
wired or wireless. If we include wireless sensors and
controllers, it will be further increased. As the number of nodes
increases, it is poor in such a communication environment
which increases the PLR and latency. In many papers a
performance evaluation according to the number of nodes has
been working, but it is required for performance evaluation in
the more number of node environment.
 Figure 3 shows that we tried to also connect 128 ZigBee
Light Link (ZLL) lighting to controller [1]. As increased the
number of the lighting, connection establishment time required
for the initial connection process increases exponentially. We
had proposed a ZigBee touch-link algorithm to reduce the time
to connect the ZLL lighting to controller.
Figure 3. 128 ZLL lighting test bed for lighting control
D. Broadcast
As we use a broadcast scheme for auto connection of lights
to scheduler, broadcast is also basic for controlling the lights.
As same as other applications, broadcasts must be reliable and
efficient for wireless lighting control network also. But when
we use broadcast scheme, in sparse networks classic flooding
may fail to reach all nodes, in a dense network it results in
excessive redundancy, contention, and collisions [6], known as
broadcast storms.
The simplest form is classic flooding. But, the simulation
results from [5] show clearly that IEEE802.15.4 CSMA/CA
and simple flooding is not suitable for a wireless lighting
control network. CSMA/CA might fulfil the latency
requirement but the PRL is high. Important issue is its real-time
performance in the lighting use case when use broadcast
scheme.
E. Power Saving
Power saving concern is very important issue in the design
of MANET, because all nodes have a mobility and use battery
for power supply. But in the wireless lighting control network,
the reason and environment for power saving is a little different.
Main reason of energy saving is to reduce operational cost and
most of the lighting can be powered by wire. So in the ad hoc
mode or infrastructure mode, wireless communication module
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doesn’t need to reduce the signal power and consider the
routing algorithm for power saving.
In the MANET, each node try to connect nearest neighbor
only, because to reduce the power consumption. But at the
wireless lighting control network, even if energy consumption
is increased by increasing the signal power, it may be a better
choice to minimize delays by reducing the hop count. So in the
wireless lighting control network it may need a new routing
algorithm.
F. Mobility
Unlike MANET environment, the mobility is not the
important factor in the wireless lighting control network
environment. Because almost of lighting is fixed on the wall or
ceiling except table and floor lighting. So in MANET routing
algorithm that considers a mobility of node is one of the most
important research themes, but in the wireless lighting network
routing algorithm that considers the existence of a node which
can deliver the lighting control information becomes a more
important issue than mobility.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we study on the performance factors for
wireless lighting control network. Some factors are also
important as conventional wireless communication network,
such as latency, packet loss and number of nodes. But others is
not, such as power saving and mobility. Problems such as
broadcast storm still remains a challenge to be solved. The
following paper will present an analysis allowing for more in-
depth view of these factors and suggest a solution.
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