On display-camera synchronization for visible light communication

Recently, Wu and Shu proposed an intriguing technique that transmits data from regular information display devices to smart phone cameras without using any additional hardware or interfering the original content intended to display. This preliminary work reveals the possibility of conducting high-speed data transmission with displays in transparency to human eyes; however, in practice, it could introduce visible artifacts and the display-camera synchronization remains an issue that affects data throughput. In this paper, we examine this technique in more realistic application scenarios and put forward a practical solution that hides the data more effectively and greatly improves the robustness of the transmission. Experimental results show that, using the proposed solution, viewers can hardly notice any artifacts caused by the data embedded in videos, and the bit error rate is acceptable under common use conditions.