On one side, the capacity of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) systems is experiencing unprecedented growth; on the other side, the number of connected devices is rapidly increasing due to the development of advanced communication technologies. These fields are not completely independent, and recent studies show that indoor energy harvesting is a great candidate for answering the energy challenges of future generations of telecommunications, namely 5G and 6G, ideal for internet-of-things (IoT) scenarios, i.e., smart homes, smart cities, and smart factories. The emerging PV technologies have shown amazing capabilities for indoor energy harvesting, displaying high power conversion efficiency, good flexibility, and champion-specific powers. Recently, the excellent dynamic performance of PV devices enabled them to be used as data receivers in optical wireless communication (OWC) scenarios, calling forth an innovative system able to simultaneously harvest energy and receive communication data with a single PV device. This article reviews the recent literature devoted to the exploitation of photovoltaic technologies for simultaneous indoor energy harvesting and OWC data reception. This contribution highlights the strong potential of the approach toward the next generation of Green IoT systems and the current challenges that need to be addressed with regard to the physics of solar cells, from laboratory to large-scale applications.

In this article, we propose an all-optical bidirectional wireless communication system for off-body sensor communication. Optical technology uses infrared (IR) for uplinks and visible light communication (VLC) for downlinks. From numerical simulations, we discuss the impact of body sensor positions on IR and VLC channels. Our goal is to evaluate the possibilities of using optical technology to transmit sensor data for extreme positions such as the ankle, for which the presence of the body creates blockages. In addition, we also consider the variations in orientation of transceivers due to random mobility of body parts during normal movement. Based on a statistical approach, we evaluate performance in terms of outage probability using channel impulse response sets corresponding to the studied scenario, which is health monitoring. Considering a given quality of service, we address trade-offs related to emitting power and data rate. We discuss the results regarding sensor node position and body reflectivity specifically for ankle sensors, corresponding to an extreme but realistic position in the health-monitoring context.

Communications inside an aircraft cockpit are currently based on wired connections especially for the audio headsets used by the pilots. A wireless headset would be an advantage in terms of comfort and flexibility but the use of classical radio frequencies is limited by interference and security issues. Optical wireless communication technology is an option for headset connectivity. Indeed, as optical beams are confined, this technology provides robustness against the risk of hacking, thus increasing security. In addition, the use of optical waves ensures the absence of radio-frequency disturbances. Using simulation, this paper presents a thorough study of the optical wireless channel behavior inside the cockpit of an aircraft by considering a headset worn by a pilot possibly in motion and an access point at the ceiling. The impact of the characteristics of the environment model, such as the level of geometric description, the reflectivity of materials and for the first time, the ambient noise induced by the sun, is highlighted. System performance is evaluated in terms of optimal half-power angles and the necessary average optical power of the light sources.

In this Letter the authors explore the communication capabilities of optical wireless technology for a wearable device dedicated to healthcare application. In an indoor environment sensible to electromagnetic perturbations such as a hospital, the use of optical wireless links can permit reducing the amount of radio frequencies in the patient environment. Moreover, this technology presents the advantage to be secure, low‐cost and easy to deploy. On the basis of commercially available components, a custom‐made wearable device is presented, which allows optical wireless transmission of accelerometer data in the context of physical activity supervision of post‐stroke patients in hospital. Considering patient mobility, the experimental performance is established in terms of packet loss as a function of the number of receivers fixed to the ceiling. The results permit to conclude that optical wireless links can be used to perform such mobile remote monitoring applications. Moreover, based on the measurements obtained with one receiver, it is possible to theoretically determine the performance according to the number of receivers to be deployed.