Enhancement of Signal Performance in LED Visible Light Communications Using Mobile Phone Camera

Visible light communication (VLC) is attractive as a supplementary method for future fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication owing to the shortage of radio-frequency bandwidth in conventional wireless communications. The VLC systems reported in the literature are mainly based on PIN receivers (Rxs). It is highly desirable if these VLC signals can be detected by using built-in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) cameras as Rxs to provide flexible and low-cost wireless communications. However, using the CMOS camera is challenging. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a VLC link using a CMOS mobile phone camera as Rx. By using the rolling shutter effect of the CMOS sensor, the VLC data rate can be significantly enhanced. We first use a second-order polynomial fitting to mitigate the "blooming effect" (saturation of pixels) of the CMOS sensor. In order to extend the VLC transmission distance and mitigate the influence of the background noise, we also propose and demonstrate using histogram equalization and Sobel filter to enhance VLC signal performance. Finally, a third-order polynomial fitting is used to define the threshold. The experimental results show that significant improvement of bit error rate (BER) for about an order of magnitude under different illuminances can be achieved.