Location-based Information Transmission Systems using Visible Light Communications

Lighting systems are undergoing a revolution from fluorescent lamps or tubes to light emitting diodes. Light emitting diodes have greater energy efficiency and longer lifetime. Built on this new lighting system, this paper considers further using the light sources to provide other benefits. The resulting system has low deployment cost and most importantly, it uses the unique characteristics of visible light to complement the existing wireless communication systems. Using visible light communications, this paper outlines a system design which has three different features. Firstly, it provides a provable secure wireless communication. In particular, a user is authenticated according to his/her location. Secondly, it includes indoor positioning systems with high precision. Lastly, it also supports information broadcast with a high frequency reuse factor. This paper provides both the experimental and theoretical results, presents techniques for using VLC under different channel characteristics and signal processing approaches, and reports their fundamental limits.