A Wide-Area Coverage 35 Gb/s Visible Light Communications Link for Indoor Wireless Applications

Abstract

Visible Light Communications (VLC) can provide both illumination and communications and offers a means to alleviate the predicted spectrum crunch for radio-frequency wireless communications. In this paper, we report a laser diode based white-light communications link that operates over a wide area and supports high data rates. The proposed system is a four-colour multiplexed high-speed VLC system that uses a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) mirror-based beam-steering. The system operates at record data-rates of more than 35 Gb/s (Bit Error Rate(BER) < 3.8 × 10−3) with a coverage area of 39 m2 at a link distance of 4 m. To the best of our knowledge this is the fastest VLC demonstration reported thus far. The paper also addresses issues of eye-safety, showing data rates of more than 10 Gb/s are feasible.

Color‐Selective Printed Organic Photodiodes for Filterless Multichannel Visible Light Communication

“…In order to match the required benchmarks of these technologies, the detector characteristics need to be tailored to the final application in terms of optoelectronic performance and device design. This is particularly relevant to upcoming technologies such as visible light communication (VLC) which aims to provide indoor navigation in buildings, direct and secure optical data links as well as high‐speed communication by using ambient lighting to transmit data 3,4. In the scope of multichannel communication, high requirements in terms of spectral selectivity should be met in addition to a fabrication route compatible with future mobile and wearable devices based on lightweight and flexible electronics.…”

Visible light communication with efficient far-red/near-infrared polymer light-emitting diodes

“…VLC links integrating OLEDs as optical transmitters have already been reported by our groups and others [9][10][11][12][13][14] , with data rates exceeding 10 Mb/s due to the leveraging of both equalisation algorithms and wavelength division multiplexing. Undoubtedly, such data rates are not as high as those afforded by "inorganic" VLC systems (up to 35 Gb/s) 20 based on multiple-quantum-well (MQW) LEDs and LDs, which are mainly limited by the intrinsic exciton decay lifetime [21][22][23][24] . This lifetime can be decreased to the sub-nanosecond range by engineering the MQW active layer volume, improving heat sinking, heavy doping, or using non-polar substrates [21][22][23][24] .…”

Transmitter and receiver technologies for optical wireless

“…Creating white (and other colour) light using a combination of LEDs offers the possibility of sending different data streams on each LED and separating them using optical filtering at the receiver. Data rates of up to approximately 15 Gb s −1 [8] have been demonstrated using red, green, blue and yellow LEDs and up to 35 Gb s −1 using red, green, blue and violet lasers [7]. Alternatively, the LEDs can be used together rather than as independent channels, and colour shift keying uses the colour sent as the data symbol.…”