The Journal of China

Universities of Posts and

Telecommunications
October 2012, 19(Suppl. 2): 197–200
www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10058885 http://jcupt.xsw.bupt.cn

Experimental study on visible light communication based on LED

WANG Jia-yuan1, ZOU Nian-yu1 ( ), WANG Dong2, IRIE Kentaro3, IHA Zensei3, NAMIHIRA Yoshinori3

1. Research Institute of Photonics, Dalian Polytechnic University, Dalian 116034, China

2. Information and Electronics Technology Laboratory, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
3. Graduate School of Engineering and Science, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa 903-0213, Japan

Abstract
A visible light communication system using white light emitting diode (LED) has been proposed and demonstrated, in
which the transmitter and receiver of visible light communication have been designed and realized. In the experiment, the
illumination of the receiving surface in different distance between LED and photodiode receiver has been tested, and the
effect of background light has been considered. The experiment results show that the data transmit bit rate can be achieved
at 111.607 kbit/s when the average indoor illumination is 40 lx, with the communication distance of our visible light system
at 1.5 m.

Keywords visible light communication, white light emitting diode, system circuit

1 Introduction  has many advantages: easy installation, high data rate, no

electromagnetic interference and so on [6–7]. And it is
As LED has many advantages such as long life, small believed that visible light communication based on white
volume, low power consumption and low heat radiation, it LED will play an important role in the next generation
had been widely deployed in many applications, such as broadband access networks. Many research works about
indoor lighting equipment, traffic lights, car indicator, visible light communication had been performed in recent
displays and so on [1–3]. White LED is expected to years [8–11]. But most of the researches are in the
replace incandescent and fluorescent lights in the future simulation stage, experiment results are very few, and the
and considered to be the next generation lighting source. research is still in its initial stage.
LED can support high speed lighting and off. In this case,
high speed data can be carried by the modulated light from
the LED, which makes information transmission possible
while lighting our life. When signals reach the receiver
through the indoor wireless channel, the photodiode will
convert the optical signals to electrical ones and the
original information will be recovered [4–5]. The visible
light communication based on LED is a novel developing
technique in the optical wireless communication field.
Fig. 1 vividly represents a scene of indoor visible light Fig. 1 Visible light communication system using LED
communication system based on LED. Compared with the
In this paper, we have designed a visible light
traditional wireless access technique, the proposed system
communication system using one 3 W LED light as signal
source, and demonstrated this visible light communication
Received date: 09-01-2012 system in the room with the average illumination of about
Corresponding author: ZOU Nian-yu, E-mail: n_y_zou@dlpu.edu.cn
DOI: 10.1016/S1005-8885(11)60422-6
40 lx. Point-to-point transmission of this indoor wireless
198 The Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications 2012

optical communication system has been realized at the first coded into a string of pulse electrical signals by micro
distance as long as 1.5 m. Different transmission rates processor unit (MPU) H8/3069F though the interface circuit.
were compared and discussed. Then, the electrical signals drive LED source directly
through a LED driver circuit, with which electronic-to-
2 System architecture optical conversion is achieved. Because of the high on-off
speed characteristic of LED, people cannot perceive the
2.1 System model
twinkling phenomena so that both lighting and information
transmitting can be realized simultaneously. The generated
The proposed visible light communication system is
optical signals carrying original information then delivered
illustrated in Fig. 2.
into the indoor wireless channel. At the receiver, pin
photodiode will detect the optical signal and do the optical-
to-electronic conversion. Then the detected weak electrical
signals are delivered into a receive circuit which contains
preamplifier for signal amplification to meet the need of the
following signal processing. The output data from receive
circuit will arrive at the MPU H8/3069F device and be
decoded into primary signal, and then sent to the PC receiver
though the universal serial bus (USB) interface circuit.

2.2 Experimental circuit

Fig. 2 Block diagram of visible light communication
Our experiment circuit diagram is illustrated in Fig. 3.
The input data from personal computer (PC) transmitter is

(a) Communication system circuitry diagram

(b) Transmit and receive circuit diagram

Fig. 3 Experimental circuit diagram of visible light communication
Supplement 2 WANG Jia-yuan, et al. / Experimental study on visible light communication based on LED 199

Fig. 3(a) shows the full circuit diagram of our visible Table 1 Experiment parameter
light communication system. The data from PC1 arrived at Parameter Value
MPU H8/3069F through an interface circuit USB-I02.0. Number of data 10 000
Data interval/ms 1
Then MPU H8/3069F will code the data into 8 bit binary Average Indoor illumination 40 lx
digit. After that, the coded data are sent to transmit circuit. The value of N 6 12
The transmit circuit drive the LED to emit the coded data. Bit rate/ (bit ˜ s 1 ) 111.607 60.096

At the receiver, the receive circuit will process the received Amplification factor 40 27 40 27
Rk/ 2.4 4.3 2.4 4.3
data and send them to decoder MPU H8/3069F in which
Communication distance/cm 15, 20, 25, …, 30
these data are decoded into the original data and sent to
PC2 through interface circuit USB-I02.0.
Fig. 3(b) shows the designed transmit and receive circuit
diagram. 12 V constant power supply is used to supply
steady current to LED light (OSW4XME3C1S). The coded
data enter the transmit circuit from INP1, when the data
arrived at field-effect tube 2SK2232, the 2SK2232 will
drive LED light and off according to the change of coded
data. PIN (S6775) is used as receiving photodiode because
its fast response rate can be up to 15 MHz. The PIN detects
the weak optical signal and changes them into weak
electrical signal. And then the weak electrical signal will
be amplified by the amplifier 2SK192A. After that, the
signal will arrive at the current amplifier LM7171. 7 805
supply 5 V constant voltage to the current amplifier
LM7171 which can amplify receive signal pulse current by
change the resistance of Rk. The LM7171 has the ability to
amplify the circuit current to 20–50 amplification factor.
When Rk. equals to 2.4 k, the current amplification factor
is 40, when Rk equals to 4.3 k, the current amplification
factor is 27. After that, the 74HC04 will judge the data Fig. 4 The transmitter control window and receiver control
window using Km2Net USB-I02.0 (AKI) software
current to 0 or 1 by the value of current. Then the data will
arrive at MPU H8/3069F to further decode through OUT2. Fig. 5 vividly shows our experiment method. The
distance from LED transmitter and photodiode (PD)
3 Experimental results and discussion receiver is changed from 15 cm, 20 cm, 25 cm, until
130 cm [6]. When the communication distance is longer
3.1 Experimental method and specification
than 130 cm, the performance of receiver cannot be
accepted.
The experimental diagram has been shown in Fig. 2. In
our experiment, a PC transmitter is used to send 10
thousands random 8 bit binary digit. Every digit interval is
set to 1 ms. The USB control window (Km2Net USB-I02.0
(AKI) software) is used to change the data rate by
changing the value of N which is illustrated in Fig. 4. In
this experiment, we use N equals to 6 (which is bit rate
equals to 111.607 kbit/s) and N equals to 12 (which bit rate
equals to 60.096 kbit/s) when the indoor illumination is
40 lx. Experiment parameter is shown in the Table 1.

Fig. 5 Experiment method

200 The Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications
3.2 Experimental results and discussion
We tested the illumination of the receiving surface in
different distance between LED and PD receiver, which
are illustrated in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6 The illumination of the receiving surface in different
distance between LED and PD receiver
It is found that with the increase of communication
distance, the illumination is sharply reduced. When the
distance is longer than 85 cm, the surface illumination of
photodiode is less than 100 lx. When the communication
distance is longer than 120 cm, the surface illumination of
photodiode is very weak and close to 0 lx. Therefore, in
practical application of indoor illumination, we should
according to demand of actual lighting to choose the
reasonable number of LED.
The results of bit error rate (BER) vs. communication
distance are shown in Fig. 7. When bit rate is 60.096 kbit/s
and Rk equals to 2.4 k(amplification factor is 40), the
system has a perfect performance without any mistake in the
first 100 cm. However, when the bit rate is 111.607 kbit/s
and Rk equals to 4.3 k (amplification factor is 27), the
none-mistake distance is 85 cm. And when the distance is
longer than 90 cm, the BER is very high. It is because that
the communication distance limits the data transmit bit rate
and BER. Therefore, our visible light communication
system still has a large space to be improved.
Fig. 7 BER vs. communication distance
2012
4 Conclusions
LED is a promising candidate of the future lighting
system. In this paper, a visible light communication based
on white LED has been proposed. We designed the
circuitry diagram by using MPU H8/3069F as the coding
and decoding devices. In our experiment, the illumination
of the receiving surface in different distance between LED
and photodiode receiver has been tested and the indoor
illumination has been considered. The BER vs.
communication distance also had been tested
experimentally. And the results show that our system has a
good performance that the communication distance can be
get 1.5 m with bit rate up to 111.607 kbit/s.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Excellent Talents Plan Project for
Universities of Liaoning Province (LR201006), and the Graduate
Student Education Innovation Project of Liaoning Province (201036).
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