A 51.6 Mb/s Experimental VLC System Using a Monochromic Organic LED

An organic light emitting diode (OLED) shows characteristics different from a traditional semiconductor LED when both are applied to visible light communication (VLC). This paper first experimentally characterizes its static and dynamic communication properties with varying input signals. This band-limited and power-limited light source leads to unique communication channel and noise models. Accordingly, the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing in conjunction with offset quadrature amplitude modulation (OFDM-OQAM) is applied, and its performance is compared against the traditional dc-biased optical OFDM. To further enhance the communication performance, a bit and power loading algorithm and a proper equalization algorithm are jointly implemented to combat the channel frequency selectivity and increase the data rate. A bit-rate of 51.6 Mb/s based on a monochromic OLED is experimentally achieved through the proposed design. The rate is comparable to the multicolor OLEDs-based VLC link in the literature.