HyperSight: A Precise Decoding Algorithm for VLC With Mobile-Phone Camera

In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate HyperSight, which is a precise image decoding algorithm for the mobile-phone camera based visible light communication (VLC) system. The conventional algorithms have to select an appropriate column matrix, and then decode the image according to the fitting curve. The selection of the column matrix and the fitting of the function are not only time-consuming but also error-prone, leading to low decoding efficiency and high bit error rate (BER). While HyperSight calculates characteristic grayscale matrix to avoid column matrix selection and uses critical grayscale to replace the function fitting to decode the image. As expected, our algorithm not only reduces the BER, but also improves the processing performance. The experimental results show that, the BER can be reduced by two orders of magnitude on average compared with the conventional scheme. For the 4.8 kbps data rate, our algorithm can achieve the transmission distance of 50 cm under the 7% forward error correction (FEC) threshold with the low illuminance of 702 lux.