2. VISIBLE LIGHT COMMUNICATION
Abstract
Human beings have always been on the path of evolution and invention. Have you ever imagined how people
sent and received information before the technological period? Wireless communication based on radio
frequencies (RF) has played a critical role in improving the quality of life. However, RF wireless
communication has no sufficient frequency spectrum (bandwidth) needed to support the ever-increasing
utilization of internet and multimedia services and applications. This spectrum scarcity is commonly known as
the spectrum crunch. Global traffic on mobile broadband systems has grown exponentially and already exceeds
predictions made in 2010 for 2020. In addition, RF wireless communication suffers from eavesdropping attacks
and electromagnetic interference (EMI). In the last few years, visible light communication (VLC) based on
light-emitting devices (LEDs) and laser diodes (LD) has gained popularity and is poised to become a promising
candidate for the next generation broadband wireless access to resolve the severe congestion of the RF spectrum
and wireless traffic bottleneck. VLC is expected to complement the existing wireless RF solutions thanks to its
high data capacity, low power consumption, high degree of security against eavesdropping and immunity to
EMI. VLC covers important applications such as indoor and outdoor free-space optics (FSO) communications
and underwater optical wireless communications (UWOC). In our research project, the main objective is to send
and receive audio/video signals using laser beam in free-space. However, exciting it may look, achieving the
desired throughput, designing the transmitter unit, channel unit (free space), and receiver unit is critical, which
we will discuss in our poster. High-speed VLC systems are expected to be useful for next generation broadband
wireless access (known as Li-Fi) and providing data connections to sensor networks and remotely operated
vehicles in underwater links as recently featured in nature photonics.
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