STTR Phase I: High-Speed Indoor Wireless Networking Using Visible Light Communications

该项目的广泛影响/商业潜力正在为公众带来众多经济和社会效益：提高信息和通信的安全性，降低公共健康风险，并整体提高全世界的生活质量。由于可见光的宽带宽，VLC具有显著提高多用户室内环境中互联网连接速度的潜力。VLC技术的商业化不仅是朝着节能迈出的一大步，为实施节能型LED系统提供了更有力的理由和愿望，而且还将提高无线数据通信的速度和安全性。这将为国家节省大量的能源，因为能源已经用于照明，因此不需要单独的通信费用。它还将提高那些担心Wi-Fi对健康影响的人的生活质量，包括儿童和孕妇在内的任何群体都可以使用它进行互联网连接，而不必担心电磁波的影响。VLC可以在学校、医院、幼儿园和其他健康问题严重的地方取代有争议的Wi-Fi技术。这个小型企业技术转移研究（STTR）第一阶段项目是开发可见光通信（VLC）系统的技术，该系统使用低成本的商业发光二极管（LED）实现高数据速率。VLC是无线应用的一种潜在的替代数据通信技术，它利用光能同时提供照明需求和数据传输。这项技术的理念是使用已经用于室内环境照明的照明系统来传输数据。具有调光特性支持的频谱高效编码和调制技术将基于组合设计来调制led。由于每个用户接收来自多个led的信号，因此将探索多输入多输出（MIMO）技术，以提高传输速度。将探讨在商业VLC系统中使用LED照明的技术问题，如LED加热，LED非线性和用低成本小电路控制大型LED阵列的解决方案。本提案第一阶段开发的技术也可以与更快但更昂贵的led和光电探测器一起使用，以实现VLC系统中的Gbps流。此外，三色led可以通过独立调制每种颜色来实现数据速率的三倍增长。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is bringing numerous economic and social benefits to the public: advance the security of information and communication, decrease public health risk, and overall increase the quality of life all around the world. VLC has the potential to significantly increase the speed of Internet connection in multiuser indoor environments due to the broad bandwidth of the visible light. Commercializing the VLC technology will not only be a big step toward energy saving and provide stronger justification and desire for implementing economical LED systems, but also will increase the speed and security of wireless data communications. It will offer a huge energy saving for the nation since energy is already used for lighting, and thus does not require separate expenditure for communications. It will also increase the quality of life for those who are concerned about the impacts of Wi-Fi on their health, and any group of people including children and pregnant women can use it for Internet connection without any concern about the effect of electromagnetic waves. VLC can replace the controversial Wi-Fi technology in schools, hospitals, kindergartens and any other place that health issues are of major concerns.This Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) Phase I project is to develop the technology for visible light communication (VLC) system that achieves high data-rates using low-cost commercial light emitting diodes (LED). VLC is a potential alternative data communication technique for wireless applications that uses optical energy to provide simultaneously lighting needs and data transmission. The idea in this technology is to transmit the data using the lighting systems that are already used for the illumination of indoor environments. Spectrally efficient coding and modulation techniques with dimming feature support will be developed based on combinatorial designs to modulate LEDs. Multi-input multi-output (MIMO) will be explored to increase the transmission speeds since each user receives signals from multiple LEDs. Solutions to address technical problems of using LEDs intended for lighting in commercial VLC systems, such as LED heating, LED nonlinearity and controlling large LED-arrays with low-cost small circuits will be explored. The techniques developed in the Phase I of this proposal can also be employed along with faster but more expensive LEDs and photo-detectors to achieve Gbps streaming in VLC systems. Furthermore, tri-chromatic LEDs can be used to achieve a three-fold increase in the data-rate by modulating each color independently.