Micro-LED-based guided-wave optical links for visible light communications

Abstract

Visible light communications (VLC) have attracted considerable research interest in recent years for use in both free-space and guided-wave optical links. In this paper, we review recent work on the development of guided-wave VLC links over plastic optical fibres (POF) and multimode polymer waveguides utilising micro-pixelated light-emitting diodes (μLEDs) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) schemes. Record 6.25 Gb/s single-directional and 10 Gb/s bi-directional data transmission have been achieved over 10 m of POF using this low-cost technology, while low-cost waveguide-based VLC systems achieving 4 Gb/s per channel have been developed.