Real-time location system and method, the system including a tag and a plurality of groups, each group including: a plurality of battery operated secondary technology base-stations, and a battery operated wireless timing beacon generator to provide a timing beacon to the group, such that the timing beacon generator for a group obtains timing information for the timing beacon wirelessly from a timing server, and such that each timing beacon generator transmits timing beacons with timing information to the plurality of base-stations in the group, and each secondary technology base-station transmits a secondary technology signal to the tag based on the received timing beacon.

Disclosed herein are methods, devices, and system for beam forming and beam steering within ultra-wideband, wireless optical communication devices and systems. According to one embodiment, a free space optical (FSO) communication apparatus is disclosed. The FSO communication apparatus includes an array of optical sources wherein each optical source of the array of optical sources is individually controllable and each optical source configured to have a transient response time of less than 500 picoseconds (ps).

A lighting system comprises a plurality of lighting devices interconnected with one another in a communication network, preferably a wireless communication network; the lighting devices define respective equivalent nodes of the network and are configured so that any one of said lighting devices of the lighting system selectively acts as a master, if an initial control input is received directly by that lighting device; and as a slave, if the initial control input is received by another lighting device.

A system for commissioning a smart luminaire (122A, 122B) in an indoor positioning system (100) includes a mobile device (110) including a mobile device control processor (112) in communication with a commissioning application (117), the commissioning application configured to communicate with one or more position beacons (120A, 120B) distributed throughout a spatial volume of a structure, the one or more position beacons configured to broadcast a unique identifier within the spatial volume via a wireless communication protocol, and to receive a transmission from the mobile device; a wireless transceiver (118) in the mobile device configured to receive the broadcasted positions, and to transmit data to the one or more position beacons, and the commissioning application configured to authenticate itself to the position beacon, and to programmatically change the unique identifier. A method for commissioning smart luminaires and a non-transitory computer-readable medium containing executable instructions is also disclosed.

The disclosure provides for a method for reacquiring a communication link between a first communication device and a second communication device. The method includes using one or more processors of the first communication device to receive historical data related to the first communication device and an environment surrounding the first communication device. The one or more processors are then used to determine one or more trends in the historical data related to fading of the communication link. Based on the one or more trends, the one or more processors are used to determine a starting time and an initial search direction for a search for the communication link. The one or more processors then execute the search at the starting time from the initial search direction.

In an embodiment, a communication method includes: performing a receiving method by a receiving device including a visible light camera module that is capable of capturing invisible light emitted by an invisible light signal emitter of a sending device. The receiving method includes: broadcasting a camera frame rate; capturing, by the visible light camera module, a plurality of frames at the camera frame rate, wherein each frame includes a corresponding area caused by a corresponding signal pulse of a portion of signal pulses, and the signal pulses are emitted by the invisible light signal emitter at a signal pulse rate substantially same as the camera frame rate; detecting the corresponding area in each frame; and labeling the corresponding area in each frame, to obtain a coding pattern corresponding to a signal pulse pattern, and decoding the coding pattern, to identify a data sequence.

A system for transmitting data using light includes a plurality of light sources configured to transmit light at non-overlapping wavelengths, processing electronics, and a diffuser configured to diffuse the transmission of light. The processing electronics assign the plurality of light sources to a plurality of channels, accept a data stream, allocate the data stream to the channels, and modulate a transmission of the light using the allocated data stream, where the allocated data used to modulate a first light source of the plurality of light sources is separate from the allocated data used to modulate a second light source of the plurality of light sources.

A visible light communication (VLC) device and method for discovery and association with a VLC infrastructure node are disclosed. The VLC device is configured to receive a beacon frame from a VLC infrastructure node. The VLC device is further configured to transmit an association request to the VLC infrastructure node. The association request includes an indication of physical layer (PHY) capabilities and an indication of medium access control (MAC) capabilities of the VLC device. The VLC device is further configured to receive an association response from the VLC infrastructure node. The association response includes information for use in communicating with the VLC infrastructure node.

A pairing device for establishing a secure wireless communication path between a first device having a first body-coupling communication interface and a second device having a screen. The pairing device includes a screen communication interface having a light sensor, which, in conjunction with the screen of the second device, allows definition of a light-based communication path for the transmission of a first pairing information from the second device to the pairing device, a calculator for generating a second pairing information once the first pairing information has been received by the pairing device, a second body-coupling communication interface, which in conjunction with the first body-coupling communication interface allows the definition of a body-coupling communication path for the transmission of the second pairing information from the pairing device to the first device, the second pairing information allowing the establishment of a secure wireless communication path between the first device and the second device.

There is provided a transmission device including an optical signal generation section configured to generate an optical signal formed by arranging one or more of each of a plurality of kinds of same-color light beams each having different phase, and a transmission section configured to transmit the optical signal generated by the optical signal generation section.