High speed integrated digital to light converter for short range visible light communication

摘要

Design details and characterisation results of an integrated digital to light converter (DLC) for short range visible light communication (VLC) is reported. The integrated DLC can generate 16 light intensity levels at fast switching speeds, up to 500 MHz, thus enabling fast intensity modulated VLC. Data rates up to 365 Mb/s are achieved with bit error rate (BER) 1 × 10−3 at a link distance of 5 cm and electrical power efficiency of 85%. The DLC achieved more linearity due to the combination of a current drive mechanism and optimised bonding techniques. Spectrally efficient modulation schemes like orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) are also demonstrated using this integrated system.