Wearables Can Afford

Abstract

Visible Light Positioning (VLP) provides a promising means to achieve indoor localization with sub-meter accuracy. We observe that the Visible Light Communication (VLC) methods in existing VLP systems rely on intensity-based modulation, and thus they require a high pulse rate to prevent flickering. However, the high pulse rate adds an unnecessary and heavy burden to receiving devices. To eliminate this burden, we propose the polarization-based modulation, which is flicker-free, to enable a low pulse rate VLC. In this way, we make VLP light-weight enough even for resource-constrained wearable devices, e.g. smart glasses. Moreover, the polarization-based VLC can be applied to any illuminating light sources, thereby eliminating the dependency on LED.