VLC with PV-Based Optical Receiver for Motion Tolerant Optical Axon

Optical axons with visible light communication (VLC) can be used to connect areas of spiking neurons that are in relative motion to each other. In electro-optical-based spiking neural network the parallel transmission of the spikes generated by many neurons is achieved by multiplexing of optical signals. Alternatively, serial transmission of the optical pulses is possible if the activation rate of the neurons permits additional delays. In low-speed VLC systems, an energy efficient photovoltaic panels (PVs) could be used for energy harvesting and data reception (i.e., photodetectors). In this work, we report a multi-input optical axon VLC link with PV -based receiver and evaluate its performance in terms of the bit error ratio (BER) when PV panel powers the SOMAs of the neurons at the transmitter side. The results show that with power harvesting BER varies between 16% and ~40% when the channel length and misalignment are in the ranges 5 - 15 cm, and 0 - 60 degree, when the ambient light is around 280 lux. In the dark these parameters, when the ambient light is below 10 lux, BER drops under 10% for line of sight and distances up to 5 m.