Polarization Differential Visible Light Communication: Theory and Experimental Evaluation

Abstract

Visible Light Communication (VLC) has received substantial research attention in the last decade. The vast majority of VLC focuses on the modulation of the transmitted light intensity. In this work, however, the intensity is kept constant while the polarization direction is deployed as a carrier of information. Demodulation is realized by using a differential receiver pair equipped with mutually orthogonal polarizers. An analytical expression to evaluate the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) as a function of the rotation angle of the receiver is derived. It is demonstrated that the signal quality can deteriorate heavily with receiver orientation when using a single differential receiver pair. A way to overcome this drawback using two receiver pairs is described. The analytical expression is experimentally verified through measurements with two different receiver setups. This work demonstrates the potential of polarization-based modulation in the field of VLC, where receiver rotation robustness has been achieved by means of a dedicated quadrant photodiode receiver.

Editorial to the Special Issue on “Visible Light Communications, Networking, and Sensing”

“…The first part is devoted to the development of new VLC techniques. J. Bruycker et al [1], in their paper "Polarization Differential Visible Light Communication: Theory and Experimental Evaluation", proposed and experimentally demonstrated a differential polarization modulation scheme, using orthogonal polarizers at both the transmitter and receiver ends of the VLC link. A general method to evaluate the SNR as a function of the receiver rotation with regard to the transmitters is determined and experimentally confirmed by measurements.…”