Visible Light Communication using Solar Panel

Last few years have witnessed an increase in popularity of wireless communication, considering its convenience and cost effectiveness. Traditional wireless communication technologies primarily use radio frequencies to carry information between different communicating entities. Increased use of radio frequencies for data communication has led to increased noise and interference due to crowded frequency bands. Visible light communication (VLC) is being considered as one of the avenues that can be used for short distance, point-to-point wireless communication. This paper presents the design and development of a prototype that enables VLC using solar panel. The developed prototype mainly comprises of light emitting diode (LED) light bulbs, solar panel, Arduino UNO micro controller to enable point-to-point VLC between two laptops. The prototype is validated for its functionality through interactive web-pages developed in MATLAB, which depict data exchange between the laptops.