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Title: Enabling Multiple Access in Visible Light Communication Using Liquid Crystal Displays: A Proof-of-Concept Study
The directionality of optical signals provides an opportunity for efficient space reuse of optical links in visible light communication (VLC). Space reuse in VLC can enable multiple-access communication from multiple light emitting transmitters. Traditional VLC system design using photo-receptors requires at least one receiving photodetector element for each light emitter, thus constraining VLC to always require a light-emitter to light-receptor element pair. In this paper, we propose, design and evaluate a novel architecture for VLC that can enable multiple-access reception using a photoreceptor receiver that uses only a single photodiode. The novel design includes a liquid-crystal-display (LCD) based shutter system that can be automated to control and enable selective reception of light beams from multiple transmitters. We evaluate the feasibility of multiple access on a single photodiode from two light emitting diode (LED) transmitters and the performance of the communication link using bit-error-rate (BER) and packet-error-rate (PER) metrics. Our experiment and trace based evaluation through proof-of-concept implementation reveals the feasibility of multiple LED reception on a single photodiode. We further evaluate the system in controlled mobile settings to verify the adaptability of the receiver when the LED transmitter changes position.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1755925
NSF-PAR ID:
10204133
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Electronics
Volume:
9
Issue:
5
ISSN:
2079-9292
Page Range / eLocation ID:
826
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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