Advancements in solid state lighting technology for smart and energy efficient illumination system design

The fundamental concepts of general purpose illumination systems are currently undergoing a complete makeover with the rapidly developing solid state lighting technology. Driven by the global concern about climate change and sustainable resource utilization, researchers are focusing on avenues to optimize the energy consumption in illumination systems through using semiconductor and organic light emitting devices, which are several times more energy efficient than the conventional light sources. Successful development of high power, white light LEDs with software controllable colors and brightness properties have achieved phenomenal application prospects with much greater success over the incandescent, fluorescent and halogen lamps. State-of-the-art LED based designs providing portability, longevity, energy savings and remote operability features are nowadays very attractive for home, office and public lighting applications. Furthermore, a wide spectrum of innovative LED based engineering concepts-like optical wireless or Li-Fi, intelligent street lamps or foldable TV screens have now captured people´s imaginations as well as the technology market by storm. This paper reviews the advent of this era of modern illumination systems, with focus on new generation LED technologies, integrated optical systems along with their most advanced applications and environmental impacts.