A Prototype of FPGA-based Centralized Multiple Transmitters for Visible Light Communications

Indoor localization systems based on Visible Light Communication (VLC) have shown promising advantages compared with systems based on other wireless technologies. In these systems, many VLC light-emitting diode (LED) anchors are employed in an indoor space in which location identification messages are sent to user devices in short messages. In normal beacon VLC networks, micro-controller (MCU) or low-end system-on-chip (SoC) are often the processing hub which executes messages of many VLC access points. In this paper, we discuss the processing overload and implementation cost of the two typical models of VLC beacon network in scenarios of a hundred of VLC-LED anchors are taken into account. Finally, an FPGA-based centralized VLC transmitter and its aided Nios II-based system has been introduced to enhance the performance of the VLC beacon network. Besides, due to the centralized processing, our system model is considered to be more cost-efficient than the dedicated-processor-based models.