Using fluorescent lighting for synchronization and mobile sensing with duty-cycled control

Abstract

In this demo, we demonstrate the usage of fluorescent lighting for temporal and spatial designs. The design leverages the fact that the fluorescent light intensity changes with a stable period, which can serve as both a global time reference and an indoor environment indicator. In the temporal domain, we focus on achieving a consistent time among different nodes without communications. In the spatial domain, nodes can acquire the knowledge of the ambient indoor/outdoor environment utilizing the periodical pattern, which is useful for WiFi-AP searching, GPS on/off switching, etc. Finally, we demonstrate a duty-cycled sampling design can largely improve the device lifetime without a significant performance compromise.