Configuring indoor visible light communication networks

Visible light communications (VLC) are becoming more and more popular and may provide an alternative means of communications in indoor settings. However, nowadays, there is very little study on the deployment or higher layer protocol design for VLC. In this paper, we perform extensive channel measurements using a physical layer testbed in the visible light band to understand its PHY layer characteristics. Our measurements suggest that in order to increase data rates with VLC (1) the beam width of a communicating link can be shrunk, and (2) the transmission beam can be tuned to point towards the target recipient. These features could be used to design higher layer protocols which brings higher throughput.