Visible light communications using organic light emitting diodes

Organic VLC is an emerging subset of visible light communications that uses organic photonic components as the link transmitter, receiver or both. Recent developments in organic LEDs have enabled high efficiency and brightness devices that can be used for data transmission as in conventional VLC systems. VLC utilizes the visible wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum (370-780 nm). Here we demonstrate an organic VLC link using an OLED with 93 kHz bandwidth as the source and a silicon photodetector with 5 MHz bandwidth and a 10 dB gain as the receiver. A wide range of modulation schemes are examined; and, as is commonplace in communications systems, equalization techniques are implemented to maximize data rates into the megabits per second region, and 2.7 Mb/s was achieved.