Visible light communication using TV displays and video cameras

Visible light communication (VLC) is an attractive alternative to radio frequency communication for applications requiring a wireless short range link. A lot of research work has been done on this topic. Different concepts for VLC are specified in standard IEEE 802.15.7. An interesting feature is the application of existing infrastructures like LED lighting to carry data transmission on top. In this paper, we describe a new approach which applies a video display as transmitter and a digital camera as receiver. Due to a multi-parallel transmission based on individual modulation of all pixels of the screen, high data rates can be achieved. A special feature is the option to design the modulation such that data transfer runs on top of a video presentation without annoying the viewer.