High-Speed Integrated Digital to Light Converter for Short Range Visible Light Communication

Design details and characterization 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) × 10
^-3
at a link distance of 5 cm and an average electrical power efficiency of 70%. Optimization in the micro light emitting diode (μ LED) manufacturing process has resulted in approximately threefold increase in data rate of the system. Spectrally efficient modulation schemes such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) are also demonstrated using this integrated system.