VLC industry develops rapidly with LED lighting

With the rapid development of the LED lighting industry, visible light communication (VLC) as a means of wireless communication using LED lights to send data has attracted the attention of wireless communication researchers and engineers and has been developed globally. Thanks to ubiquitous infrastructure, high-power and large-bandwidth communications, green radiation, and eavesdropping, VLC technology is expected to effectively expand the existing wireless communication spectrum and communication methods, and can be applied to high-speed data transmission. Wireless communication coverage, indoor positioning navigation, and low-speed communication in the camera under electromagnetic shielding scenarios.

At present, VLC has achieved certain development on a global scale, but it still faces challenges such as the immature industrial environment, the lack of relevant product competitiveness, and unclear development goals. However, with the rise of industrial Internet, artificial intelligence and other technologies, the market space of VLC industry will be opened. If related applications can be popularized in some scenarios, the VLC industry is expected to take off.

The research of visible light communication technology originated in Japan, developed in Europe and the United States, and is stronger than domestic ones. As early as 2003, a number of research institutes and companies engaged in VLC research in Japan established the Visible Optical Communications Alliance to study VLC application technology and promote the industrialization and standardization of VLC as the goal. Companies such as NEC, NTT, Casio, KDDI, Sony, Tokyo Electric Power and Toshiba, and universities and universities such as Tokyo University and Keio University are members of the alliance.

The early VLC technology was mainly applied to low-speed indoor transmission, positioning, and underwater communication scenarios. The communication speed was low and the communication distance was relatively short. Theoretical research was not yet in depth. From 2008 to 2010, with the OMEGA project of the European Union FP7, VLC is regarded as a means of high-speed wireless data access for smart homes, including a large number of strengths including France Telecom, Oxford University, Thomson, Siemens, and HHI. The unit participated in the research and development of the VLC wireless access system and promoted the rapid development of the VLC technology for the first time.

In this round of technological advancement, VLC theory has been gradually studied. Technologies including adaptive optical path, pre-equalization, MIMO, OFDM, and high-order code modulation were applied to VLC to expand the maximum communication rate of VLC to about 500 Mbps. The farthest communication distance extends to about 100 meters. From 2012 to 2015, research institutes such as Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Information Engineering University of the People's Liberation Army, Institute of Semiconductors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other research institutes began to pay attention to VLC research. The National Ministry of Science and Technology established “973” and “863” in VLC. "Special topics such as the study encourage relevant theories and applied research.

VLC technology has once again achieved leapfrog development under the leadership of domestic research teams. Special breakthroughs have been made in areas such as dedicated OFDM modulation, wavelength division multiplexing, communication lighting integration, and ultra-high-speed VLC communication systems. The commercial lighting LED can have a modulation bandwidth of 350 MHz or more, and the single LED wick communication rate is extended to 3 Gbps to 5 Gbps. With MIMO, higher theoretical communication rates can be achieved.

In the past two years, VLC technology has begun to move toward application. Potential application scenarios include high-speed data transmission, wireless communication coverage in electromagnetic shielding scenarios, indoor positioning navigation, and low-speed communication in cameras. The focus of VLC research shifts from theoretical basis to engineering practice, such as VLC network structure and network topology, uplink and downlink communication combination methods, communication coverage and mobile switching, camera communication codec algorithms and so on.