Wireless Routing in New Generation Lighting Systems

Wireless communication has become an interesting and important topic nowadays. Both research and industry already started to focus on it and in building automation there is already a keen competition. One approach to cut the prices of wireless products down is to use low-cost hardware components. This book aims this matter by discussing the problems that can occur by using low-cost microcontrollers in wireless lighting systems. Such cheap components are not able to host a complex protocol. The goal is to show on a practical example that low-cost microcontrollers are suitable for wireless lighting systems and that even with limited memory a robust wireless communication is possible. The big challenge is to develop a network layer that provides an efficient communication through the whole network and additionally copes with the limited capacity of the hardware. Existing state of the art communication protocols need to be adapted to the requirements of low-cost microcontrollers. The result of this research is not only limited to lighting systems but can also be used in other fields of application, where low-cost microcontrollers are needed to provide wireless communication.