Development of Propeller LED Transmitter for High-Speed Image Sensor Communication

Visible light communication (VLC) is an optical wireless technology that utilizes visible light for communication. This research focuses on VLC, precisely image sensor communication (ISC), using a camera as the receiver. ISC benefits from the camera’s ability to easily distinguish between transmitted signals and ambient light noise. However, ISC’s communication speed relies on the camera’s shooting speed. To address this limitation, we developed a rotary LED transmitter. This device enhances communication speed by rotating the LED light like a cylinder, creating multiple light trails that the receiver can capture. We demonstrated a 60-fold improvement in communication speed compared to conventional methods. Based on this previous work, we are currently working on a propeller LED transmitter to enhance further speed, projected to achieve a six-fold improvement over the previous one. Namely, the communication speed would be 360 times faster than the conventional non-rotating transmitter method. This paper describes P-Tx and its circuit board under development. In addition, we show the results of our trial experiments with P-Tx.