Experimental Characterization of RGB LED Transceiver in Low-Complexity LED-to-LED Link

Mariam Galal; Wai Pang Ng; Richard Binns; Ahmed Abd El Aziz

doi:10.3390/s20205754

Experimental Characterization of RGB LED Transceiver in Low-Complexity LED-to-LED Link

Sensors (Basel). 2020 Oct 10;20(20):5754. doi: 10.3390/s20205754.

Authors

Mariam Galal^{1

2}, Wai Pang Ng¹, Richard Binns¹, Ahmed Abd El Aziz²

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK.
² College of Engineering and Technology, Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport, Alexandria P.O. 1029, Egypt.

Abstract

This paper proposes a low-complexity and energy-efficient light emitting diode (LED)-to-LED communication system for Internet of Things (IoT) devices with data rates up to 200 kbps over an error-free transmission distance up to 7 cm. The system is based on off-the-shelf red-green-blue (RGB) LEDs, of which the red sub-LED is employed as photodetector in photovoltaic mode while the green sub-LED is the transmitter. The LED photodetector is characterized in the terms of its noise characteristics and its response to the light intensity. The system performance is then analysed in terms of bandwidth, bit error rate (BER) and the signal to noise ratio (SNR). A matched filter is proposed, which optimises the performance and increases the error-free distance.

Keywords: BER; LED photodetector; LED-to-LED communication; matched filter; visible light communication (VLC).

Publication types

Letter