Smart Retail

IoT for Commercial Lighting

Retailers are seeking ways to enhance, attract, and engage shoppers. Commercial lighting offers retailers the opportunity to create modern retail experiences through IoT wireless solutions. From energy efficiency to IoT Security applications, retailers are creating smart retail spaces of the future.

Wireless Commercial Lighting in Retail

Energy Efficiency and Greener Spaces

Lighting consumes a substantial portion of a building's energy, often reaching 25% of the budget. Smart lighting offers significant energy cost reductions for businesses and enhances commercial building sustainability. The shift from incandescent to LED lighting is a key industry trend.

Yet, energy-efficient LEDs are only a part of the equation. Automatic occupancy and daylight sensors cut costs by adjusting lighting to demand and dimming when natural light is ample, helping businesses save energy and money while reducing their carbon footprint.


Using Wireless to Simplify Setup and Maintenance

Integrating Bluetooth mesh into lighting systems offers many advantages. It simplifies installation, reduces cables, and makes mounting sensors and controls easier. Retrofitting on existing systems speeds up construction and cuts costs. Battery-powered or energy-harvesting sensors and controls also save time and money. Bluetooth enables easy setup and maintenance through smartphone apps, simplifying the process even more.


Enhance Value Through Location Services

In commercial buildings, luminaires are widespread and often densely installed. When these luminaires incorporate wireless technology like Bluetooth for sensor and control connections, this same tech can serve for location services.

Transforming luminaires into virtual Bluetooth beacons, they periodically transmit beacon packets to smartphones and other portable devices. Deploying Bluetooth beacons opens opportunities for valuable services, including indoor positioning and wayfinding.


IoT-Powered Commercial Lighting Solutions

Silicon Labs' wireless offering empowers future-proof commercial lighting designs, enabling seamless integration of new applications and features, such as circadian lighting, predictive maintenance, and enhanced location services, through software upgrades.

IoT Commercial Lighting Design Considerations


Mesh Networking for Wireless Lighting

Commercial lighting systems often span large areas with dense networks of nodes. Technologies like Bluetooth mesh or Zigbee are ideal due to their scalability, multi-hop communication, and support for both mains and low-power nodes.

As a leading provider of wireless mesh networking, we've deployed over 100 million nodes for lighting applications. Our wireless SoCs include major mesh networking technologies like Bluetooth mesh, Zigbee, Thread, and Z-wave, tailored to lighting's unique needs.


Standardized Network Lighting Control Device Profiles

The recently standardized Network Lighting Control (NLC) device profiles enhance the efficiency of commercial environments by introducing automated and adaptable lighting control into LED systems. By integrating lighting operation and management with sensors capable of detecting specific needs within each area, such as occupancy and natural light levels, this ensures that lighting is activated precisely when needed.

Our Bluetooth SoCs and modules can support the following NLC profiles: ambient light sensor, basic scene selector, dimming control, basic lightness controller, and occupancy sensor.


Optimize for Mains-Powered Applications

Luminaires serve as the backbone of a mesh-connected network, relaying messages between nodes. Typically, these devices are mains powered and don't require optimization for battery operation.

Our EFR32xG21 is optimized for these core devices in a mesh network and have the industry’s best RF performance when it comes to transmit power and receiver sensitivity. These devices are also equipped with 96 kB of RAM and 1024 kB of Flash ensuring they can run the core networking activity and for example, Bluetooth beaconing while participating in a mesh network. EFR32xG21 also operates up to +125 °C which can be useful in some applications.


Maximize IoT Security in Commercial Lighting Applications

IoT Security is paramount in commercial lighting applications. Security vulnerabilities on an enterprise lighting system can threaten the entire network, business applications, and public security and cause material damage to a brand and business.

Our wireless solutions are secured at all levels to safeguard your lighting product against the most sophisticated attacks. Our Secure Vault firmware enabled the world’s first wireless SoCs to achieve PSA Certified Level 2 certification. 

 

Commercial Lighting Block Diagram

Additional Products and Services

Explore your IoT Training with Works With 2023 On-Demand Sessions

Works With 2023 featured expert-led IoT training, including more than 40 technical sessions across six tracks, and you can watch all of them on-demand here. This curriculum features the latest trends, tools, and design techniques for developers and will dive deep into the technologies driving the IoT. You can start with your wireless technology by clicking the links below.

Additional Resources and Documentation 

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