Commercial lighting solutions have evolved into more advanced and sophisticated systems. The adoption of a more advanced lighting control system is mainly for two purposes:

1. greatly reduce energy costs;
2. greatly improve the experience of building users.

The following are the evolutionary directions of commercial lighting systems:

• Replace traditional wired connections with wireless connections.The move is to significantly reduce installation and ongoing maintenance costs, especially in retrofit scenarios.
• Reduce costs by automating many traditional manual functions.
• Enable intelligence and decision-making by connecting to the cloud.
• Smart Lighting
• The luminary also incorporates a large number of sensors. Lighting is becoming the nervous system of a building, allowing other building systems, including HVAC, to function better. Sensors installed in luminaries include personnel sensing sensors, light sensors, temperature sensors, humidity sensors, and the like.

What is commercial lighting? Why deploy commercial lighting?

Commercial lighting systems refer to lighting systems deployed in offices, shops, institutions, hospitals, industrial spaces and factories. Commercial lighting systems tend to have higher initial costs, longer lifetimes, better durability, and higher maintenance and service costs than residential lighting systems. The main reasons for adopting commercial lighting systems include maximizing energy savings, meeting building code requirements, and providing a comfortable user experience. Commercial lighting systems generally consist of the following components:

• Sensor：Person-sensing sensors, light sensors, and other multi-functional environmental sensors such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, etc.
• Lamps：Refers to the lamp group itself and all components directly related to the distribution, positioning and protection of the lamp group.
• Switch：A device that controls the light group, which can directly trigger functions such as on/off and brightness adjustment.
• Relay：Relays are sometimes used to transmit control commands from switches or to retransmit commands after implementing more advanced intelligent functions such as logic and decision making.

A Comparison of the Best Wireless Technologies for Commercial Lighting

Based on attributes such as scalability and performance, reliability, interoperability, privacy and security, and cost, the wireless technologies best suited for commercial lighting applications are Bluetooth mesh, Zigbee, and Thread ( Electric cable). Let’s compare the most common technologies based on the key attributes listed:

The design of the Bluetooth mesh network fundamentally addresses the needs of the commercial lighting field. The main basic features that distinguish the Bluetooth mesh network from other technologies include a revolutionary distributed control architecture, a revolutionary publish/subscribe message addressing, and a revolutionary managed message flood relay. These properties enable Bluetooth mesh networks to handle common large-scale industrial deployments in a more reliable and robust manner than other technologies.