Experimental Validation of Optical Wireless Receiver using Solar Panel with Bandwidth Enhancement Circuit

Abstract

This paper presents a bandwidth enhancement circuit that enhances the 3 dB bandwidth of an off-the-shelf solar panel based receiver system for optical wireless communication. Experiment results show enhancement of the 3 dB bandwidth from 163 kHz to 1.62 MHz. A data rate of 1.5 Mbps is achieved with the OOK modulation scheme over the VLC link of 1 m. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest data rate using solar panel as a receiver with OOK modulation. Low-cost, larger receiving area, ease of integration with other devices make the proposed system an environment-friendly and energy-efficient solution for optical wireless communication.