Alamouti-type coding for visible light communication based on direct detection using image sensor

This paper proposes Alamouti-type space time (ST) coding to visible light communication (VLC) using light emitting diodes (LEDs) and image sensor-based direct detection with a high-speed camera. Although multiple LEDs of an array are used as transmitters to communicate to individual pixel elements of an image sensor which act as multiple receive elements, the received signal is essentially the image of the transmitting element, whose size in pixel reduces with distance. When the receiver captures the LED array at a distance where images of two neighboring LEDs in the array are not separated at the image plane, such distortion depreciates the symbol decision quality. Our proposed scheme aims at expanding the communication range limited by the pixel resolution of image sensor. Our implemented prototype demonstrates that ST coding is feasible to achieve 48-meter error-free transmission range while the repetition transmission achieves 26-m error-free range.