Research School 2019

Enabling Technologies for Industry 4.0

Design and Implementation of A Flexible Software-defined Visible Light Communication
System Based on Raspberry Pi 3
Chau V. Nguyen, Hai-Chau Le
Posts and Telecommunications Institute of
Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam
Abstract
Software defined radio has proven to be a practical and effective approach to realize cost-efficiently, flexible wireless communication systems.
Recently, visible light communication (VLC) technology has attracted a lot of attention due to its great potentials to cope with the increasing
demands for faster and more secure wireless communications and the spectrum scarcity. Utilizing software-defined ratio for implementing VLC
devices can further exploit the advantages of VLC to create promising infrastructure for future wireless communication networks. In our
research, we have investigated a Software-Defined VLC (SD-VLC) solution that adapts SDR platforms to the constraints of an optical wireless
channel using the visible spectrum. Such platform can be dynamically modified and the idea is to modulate LEDs transmitting electromagnetic
waves in the visible light frequencies to communicate between devices within the same room. We have also successfully designed and built a
simple and cost-effective SD-VLC transmission system based on Raspberry Pi 3. Experimental results verified the designed features and
demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed SD-VLC system.

Problem Statement Contributions

Wireless communication has become a fundamental We focus on developing the SD-VLC system, in which The system software:
matter in our lives and a large amount of data is the building of the transmitter and receiver is based on We have developed our transmitting and receiving software
transmitted everyday. Wireless data transmission is mainly an open source platform such as Raspberry Pi 3 and based on Python language running on Raspbian OS with
by electromagnetic waves, especially radio waves. can be flexibly configured by software. serial ports as communication ports and readable data can be
However, radio waves only have limited bandwidth due to Block diagram of developed SD-VLC system model from files, keyboard or assigned characters.
limited spectrum, causing a lack of radio capacity to Receiving Below are the flowcharts for transmitting (left) and receiving
support communication applications. ethernet
Transmission
GPIO control &
displaying (right) software.
Transmitting Photo Receiving
There is a kind of wireless communication with a control software
circuit diode circuit collected
(Raspberry Pi 3) data
promising future to complement radio waves which is VLC. UART
software
Start Start

VLC (Visible Light Communication): Wireless optical

transmission using visible spectrum (wavelength: 380nm- The system hardware: - Set up the transmission
Set up the receiver
750nm) from LED, light bulbs, etc. • Transmitter: The data transmission can be implemented parameters for the
communication port parameters for the
communication port
using a single LED as a transmitter. Emitting a light - Initialize the system

pattern is straightforward: simply turn the LED on and

off based on predefined timings. Enter data to
“Input”
• Receiver: That includes photodiode & amplifier. Such a
Read data from input
device essentially consists of a photodiode coupled with port “data”
a transimpedance amplifier. A dedicated sensor has the
main advantage that much fainter signals can be Input==Null Yes

(No
detected and thus allows for significantly further transmissi-
on data)
transmission distances. data==Null
Yes

• Mini-computer platform, Raspberry Pi 3, is used as a

Besides, software-defined radio technology is an software-based controller for the system. It takes charge No
No

architecture that combines hardware and software to of converting the data to binary information and LED
Send data (Input) to the Export received data
process radio signals obtained in space, allowing users to driver at the transmitter and converting binary communication port to screen

customize the transmitting and receiving hardware.
Hence, in this research, we are aiming to build a
wireless transmission platform that is based on Raspberry
Pi 3 with simple and low-cost hardware components and
combines software-defined technique and VLC technology.
information to original message at the receiver.
Raspberry Pi 3 is connected to the input of the By using Raspberry Pi 3 platform, we were able to flexibly
transmitting circuit through GPIO to control the adjust the transceiver parameters such as transmitting speed
transmitting signals. Also, the minicomputer is hooked and modulate the transmitting signals with On-Off Keying
up to the output of the receiving circuit in order to method.
communicate through UART.

The following parameters are applied in our

Experimental Results experiments:
• Transmit symbol “U” (bit sequence of “1010101”) a/ Transmitted
symbols (left)
Testbed • Normal room lighting condition
and Received
• Transmission distance: 10 cm symbols (right)
• Transmission speed: from 9600 baud rate up to at 14400 baud
19200 baud rate rate
• LED: 3W
• Photodiode: 3DU7

b/ Transmitted
Transmitted symbols (left)
pulses and Received
symbols (right)
at 19200 baud
rate
Received
pulses
• We have tested our developed SD-VLC system with the speed of up
Receiving Transmitting to 14400 baud rate without any errors.
Transmitted pulses and Received pulses shown on oscilloscope • The transmission speed of the system can be up to the baud rate of
circuit circuit
19200 without error correction (but some errors can be occurred).

Conclusions and Future work References

We have succeeded in building a prototype of an SD-VLC transmission system with the
ability to adjust the transceiver parameters easily by software. The system was also tested
and it worked stably at the speed of up to 14400 baud rate. It is proved that SD-VLC is a
powerful concept for facilitation of VLC in particular and wireless networking in general,
setting the foundation for our future mobile network.
In the future, we expect to enhance the performance of our Software-Defined VLC system
with faster speed of at least 1 Mb/s and adapt more complex modulation methods like PPM
or Reverse RZ to be able to send and receive pictures or videos and even more.
[1] Michael Rahaim, Ali Mirvakili, Sagar Ray, Mona Hela, Valencia J. Koomson & Thomas D.C. Little, Software Defined Visible
Light Communication, 2014.
[2] Adam Bocker, Viktor Eklind, Daniel Hansson, Philip Holgersson, Jakob Nolkrantz & Albin Severinson, An Implementation of
A Visible Light Communication System Based On LEDs, 2015.
[3] Stefan Schmid, Stefan Mangold, Benjamin von Deschwanden & Thomas R. Gross, Adaptive Software-Defined Visible Light
Communication Networks, 2017 IEEE/ACM Second International Conference on Internet-of-Things Design and
Implementation (IoTDI), 2017.
[4] T. Komine, M. Nakagawa, Fundamental Analysis for Visible-Light Communication System Using LED Lights, IEEE
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