Enabling Low-power Duplex Visible Light Communication

Abstract: The new generation of LED-based illuminating infrastructures has enabled a "dual-paradigm" where LEDs are used for both illumination and communication purposes. The ubiquity of lighting makes visible light communication (VLC) well suited for communication with mobile devices and sensor nodes in indoor environment. Existing research on VLC has primarily been focused on advancing the performance of one-way communication. In this paper, we present Retro-VLC, a low-power duplex VLC system that enables a mobile device to perform bi-directional communication with the illuminating LEDs over the same light carrier. The design features a retro-reflector fabric that backscatters light, an LCD shutter that modulates information bits on the backscattered light carrier, and several low-power optimization techniques. We have prototyped the Reader system and made a few battery-free tag devices. Experimental results show that the tag can achieve a 10kbps downlink speed and 0.5kbps uplink speed over a distance of 2.4m. We also outline several potential applications of the proposed Retro-VLC system.