abstract

• PIN (positive intrinsic negative) photodiodes and analog-to-digital converters (ADC) are commonly used on visible light communication (VLC) receivers in order to retrieve the data on detected signals. In this paper, a visible light communication receiver based on a light to frequency converter (LTF) is proposed. We characterized the LTF and derived an equation for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation in terms of its input optical power, and the frequency of the output periodic signal. The experiments show that the periodic signal of the LTF converter has a maximum output frequency of 600 kHz at a distance of 6.2 cm. In this setup, measured SNR reached 18.75 dB, while the lowest obtained SNR with 1.1 m length was roughly −35.1 dB. The results obtained suggest that a bit rate of 150 kbps can be achieved with an on-off keying (OOK) modulation format. We analyzed the results and discuss the advantages and limitations of the LTF converter for optical wireless communication purposes. © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

authors

• Betancur Perez A.F.
• Luna Rivera José Martin
• López Giraldo F.E.
• Martínez Ciro R.A.

publication date

• 2018-01-01

funding provided via

• Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, ITM  Grant
• Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, UASLP  Grant

published in

• Electronics (Switzerland)  Journal

keywords

• Light to frequency converter; Optical wireless communication; Visible light communication; White-light LED

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.3390/electronics7090165

start page

end page

volume

• 7

issue

• 9