1
A Framework for Simultaneous Message
Broadcasting Using CDMA-based Visible Light
Communications
Yan-Ann Chen, Yi-Ting Chang, Yu-Chee Tseng, Fellow, IEEE, and Wen-Tsuen Chen, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—IoT applications are fast growing recently. One of
the “things” that has a lot of potential is the lighting equipment
since it is widely used in our daily life. Recently, the technology of
visible light communication (VLC) has been widely discussed. VLC
has several advantages, such as freedom of license, line-of-sight
security, and less health concern compared to radio-based sys-
tems. In addition, the rapid progress of light emitting diode (LED)
technology by solid-state lighting allows VLC to be easily deployed
and integrated with existing lighting infrastructure at low costs.
However, VLC, when integrated with lighting infrastructure, is
usually for one-way communication and is highly sensitive to
external interfering light. Thus, transmitting or broadcasting
multiple messages simultaneously over a visible light channel
without any preprocessing may result in serious collisions. In
this paper, we propose a framework to tackle these problems by
optical code division multiple access (CDMA) for VLC. With our
approach, a VLC receiver can enter an environment without any
prior configuration and can be designed with simple hardware.
Even a mobile device with a high-resolution photodiode sensor
can be used as a receiver. We demonstrate an application of
indoor positioning by querying the location service provider on
Internet with the IDs decoded from the received light signals.
The prototyping results reveal some communication properties
of CDMA-based VLC and its potential for indoor positioning
applications.
Index Terms—broadcast, CDMA, IEEE 802.15.7, localization,
pervasive computing, visible light communication.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Among the many “things” in the IoT world, lighting equip-
ments have a lot of potential because they widely exist in
our daily life. Recent developments of the light emitting diode
(LED) technology by solid-state lighting (SSL) have led to lots
of interests in visible light communication (VLC). VLC is also
a kind of wireless communications with great convenience. A
transmitter sends data through an optical source, e.g., LED, by
modulating light intensities or colors. A receiver interprets the
received signals through an optical sensor, e.g., photodiode, by
demodulating the signals. If the modulation of light intensities
is fast enough, no flicks of light will be perceived by human
eyes during transmissions. More recently, SSL is considered
Y.-C. Tseng’s research is co-sponsored by MoE ATU Plan, MOST 104-
2221-E-009-113-MY3, MOST 104-2218-E-009-009, Academia Sinica AS-
102-TP-A06, ITRI, Delta, and D-Link. This work was also supported by
MOST, NTU, and Intel under Grants MOST 103-2911-I-002-001, NTU-ICRP-
104R7501, and NTU-ICRP-104R7501-1.
Y.-A. Chen, Y.-T. Chang, and Y.-C. Tseng are with the Department of
Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, 30010, Taiwan
(e-mail: {chenya, yitchang, yctseng}@cs.nctu.edu.tw)
W.-T. Chen is with the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica,
Taipei, 11529, Taiwan (e-mail: chenwt@iis.sinica.edu.tw)
Lighting Range Intersection Region
D1 D2
Control
Host
Lighting Device
User Device
Fig. 1. The networking scenario of our system.
the main choice for indoor lighting due to its advantages of
energy efficiency, longer lifetime, smaller size, and robustness
compared to incandescent and fluorescent lighting. Since SSL
has fast switching time, a VLC system can be easily embedded
into an LED lighting source.
Message broadcasting is an important function for indoor
VLC applications including positioning, navigation, and adver-
tisement. For example, in a shopping mall, the lighting devices
of a region can periodically broadcast advertisements of nearby
stores. So customers can get localized advertisements. The
main challenge of message broadcasting in indoor VLC is
the interference problem. Although the interference caused
by ambient light may be eliminated by real-time calibration,
the interference caused by other lighting devices is hard to
eliminate. This is particularly true because these may not exist
return channels for mobile devices to report collisions. So
simultaneous broadcast from multiple lighting sources over a
common VLC channel without any preprocessing may result
in serious collisions. Recently, several solutions have been
proposed. Reference [1] presents a TDMA-like mechanism to
prevent interference among VLC networks. References [2], [3]
exploit frequency shift keying and rolling shutter mechanism
of CMOS camera to achieve small data transmission via smart-
phones. Reference [4] utilizes OFDM modulation to achieve
broadcasting at a high data rate in an indoor environment.
References [5], [6] use optical code division multiple access
(CDMA) to design VLC networks for the access of multiple
users. However, these works may need complex hardware or
heavy computation for signal and image processing.

We propose a framework for optical CDMA-based VLC,
which may incur lower hardware and computation costs, to
achieve interference-free message broadcasting. In this frame-
work, we design a frame structure to coordinate broadcasting
messages from different light sources while carrying essen-
tial information for receivers. By exploiting the information,
the receiver can realize how to decode broadcast messages
with almost no pre-configured knowledge when entering a
VLC network. It makes our system very easy to use. In
VLC, the modulation and demodulation is usually achieved
through intensity modulation with direct detection. Since the
light intensity is non-negative, the VLC system is unipolar.
However, the traditional CDMA for radio communications,
which is bipolar, cannot be directly used. Although there are
some unipolar encoding schemes such as optical orthogonal
code [7], the code sequence of unipolar schemes is usually
larger and the cross-correlation of those schemes may not
perform better. In this work, thus, we consider the bipolar
encoding scheme and utilize unipolar-bipolar sequencing [8]
for conversion.
Fig. 1 shows our networking scenario. Multiple lighting
devices cover an indoor environment. Each user in the envi-
ronment should carry a mobile device with an optical sensor.
We consider white light LEDs to be the lighting devices. These
lighting devices can be arbitrarily deployed in this environment
according to illumination requirements. The common scenario
which deploys the lighting devices in a grid manner [9],
[10] is also supported. Modulation is done through adjusting
light intensity. All lighting devices are connected to a control
host, which can allocate CDMA codes to lighting devices
according to their overlapping regions. For example, in Fig. 1,
the range of device D1 intersects with that of device D2 , so
the control host must allocate different codes to them to avoid
the inter-device interference. Broadcasting messages are issued
by the control host and can vary from devices to devices due
to CDMA. For instance, to support location-based services
(LBS), each device can simply broadcast its geographic in-
formation or its unique identification. Since lighting devices
normally cover almost everywhere in a building, this achieves
indoor localization at low costs.
The contributions of this work are as follows. First, we
consider a approach with lightweight computation and simple
hardware for achieving simultaneous broadcasting because IoT
devices may only have limited capabilities. Second, we design
the frame structure to carry system information for receivers
to join the network without pre-configured knowledge. Third,
we introduce the implementation details of our prototyping for
fulfilling the simultaneous VLC broadcasting system. Finally,
we validate our results by extensive experiments through our
prototyping system.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Related
works are surveyed in Section II. Section III introduces our
framework design. Section IV presents our prototyping results.
Finally, Section V concludes this paper.
II. R ELATED W ORKS
In this section, we first survey related works on VLC. Then
we review works on VLC-based indoor localization since it is
2
an important application of VLC.
Visible Light Communication. Reference [11] provides an
overview of VLC and discusses some interference issues. It
also points out some potential applications. Reference [12]
describes various VLC modulation methods, flicker mitigation,
and dimming support. References [13], [14], [15] consider
turning VLC into commercialized products. However, these
works only focus on data transmission, and the interference
issue is not well addressed.
In a VLC system, the transmitter could be the LED light and
the display screen. Then, the receiver could be the photodiode
and the image sensor. Several works [2], [3], [13], [14], [16],
[17], [18] utilize the image sensor, i.e., digital camera, as the
receiver for constructing VLC. However, the image processing
is more complex than handling the received light intensity.
Since our goal is to focus on the approach with lightweight
computation and low cost for IoT devices, we consider the
photodiode as the receiver in this work.
For dealing with the interference problem of communica-
tions, VLC system may exploit multiple access techniques
such as TDMA, FDMA, and CDMA. By applying TDMA-
like mechanism, reference [1] schedules the transmissions
by tuning the beam width and beam angle. However, this
approach cannot achieve simultaneous broadcasting. By ex-
ploiting OFDM, reference [4] implements a data broadcasting
system of VLC. The usage of OFDM does increase the data
rate, but more complex hardware, such as dedicated DSP, is
needed. Note that different from our goal, their broadcasting
system is designed to achieve high-speed transmission. By
utilizing CDMA mechanism, references [5], [6] design VLC
networks with OCDMA for multi-user access. In their systems,
an individual OCDMA code is assigned to one user for mul-
tiple access. However, they are not designed for broadcasting
and cannot support location-based services. Our work assigns
CDMA codes to lighting sources for achieving simultaneous
message broadcasting. Besides, in our application, the code
length is determined by the number of intersected lighting
sources, which may be much less than the case for multiple
access.
Indoor Localization with Visible Light. Indoor local-
ization is an potential application for VLC. Several works
compute the fine-grained location by analyzing the signal
strength of the received light through a specific method
such as the correlation method based on the Lambertian
law [10], [19], [20], frequency division multiplexing [21],
and time differences of arrival [22]. However, the digital
communications capability, which comes naturally with VLC,
is either lost or not addressed. Our work will cover both issues.
For integrating the positioning system with VLC, references
[2], [3] exploit the rolling shutter effect of CMOS camera
on smartphones to decode modulated beacons from multiple
light sources. However, the demodulation is computation-
intensive when processing captured images. In contrast, our
work adopts a lightweight OCDMA mechanism. Reference
[23] utilizes bipolar and unipolar OCDMA codes to evaluate
the positioning performance. In their work, however, the codes
used by lighting sources should be known by the receiver in
advance. Our work utilizes a frame structure where the receiver
 3

Senders s1,s2,…,sn VLC channel Receiver rix

RADIO COMMUNICATIONS VLC
s1 uses c1

X1 1 1 X1 1 1 0 Code
c1 Conversion
c′1 ri xuses ci ci
-1
Data1 Signal x
Signal Datai
X2 1 X2 1 0 0 Conversion

…
-1 -1 si uses ci
Code
ci Conversion
c′i

X1+X2 2 0 X1+X2 2 1 0 Datai

…
sn uses cn
-2
Code
cn Conversion
c′n

Datan
Fig. 2. Comparison of signals in radio communications and VLC.

Fig. 3. Workflow of our optical CDMA for VLC.

can extract the code assignment and system parameters to
generate orthogonal codes in an online manner.
Senders s1 and s2 VLC channel Receivers r1x and r2x
s1 uses c1=(1,1) ࢉ૚ ᇱ =(1,1) rx
uses c1=(1,1)
III. S YSTEM D ESIGN Code
ࢉഥ૚ᇱ =(0,0) 1

c1 Conversion
c′1 (1,2,1,0,0,1,1,0) c1
(0,2,0,-2,-2,0,0,-2)
This section proposes a framework to achieve interference- Signal x Signal
Data1 Data1
free message broadcasting over a CDMA-based VLC net- Conversion
(1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0)
(1,0,0,0)
work. Our networking scenario is as shown in Fig. 1, where (1,2,1,0,0,1,1,0)
VLC

2
CDMA

2
(1,0,0,0)
s2 uses c2=(1,-1) ࢉ૛ ᇱ =(1,0)
light sources are fixed and controllable, but their illumination ࢉഥ૛ᇱ =(0,1)
1
0
0
-2
Code
regions may intersect. In our system, we use on-off keying c2 Conversion c′2 Mapping table

(OOK) to modulate the visual signals. For avoiding flicker Data2

r2x uses c2=(1,-1)

problem [24], OOK with Manchester encoding could be used c2

(0,1,1,0,0,1,1,0) (0,2,0,-2,-2,0,0,-2)
(0,1,0,1)
to limit the off period of modulated signals. Then, the lighting Signal Data2
Conversion
devices and the receiver follow our proposed frame format VLC CDMA (0,1,0,1)
to transmit the encoded messages and decode the received (1,2,1,0,0,1,1,0) 2 2
1 0
signals, respectively. 0 -2
Mapping table
Below, we describe optical CDMA mechanism in Sec-
tion III-A. The proposed frame structure is discussed in Fig. 4. An encoding and decoding example of our optical CDMA for VLC.
Section III-B.

A. Optical CDMA for VLC
VLC is a positive system where it uses ‘light on’ and
‘light off’ for modulating symbols 1 and 0, respectively.
Binary CDMA used in radio communication systems cannot
be directly applied to VLC because a code in CDMA is a
sequence of 1s and −1s. Consequently, we exploit unipolar-
bipolar sequencing to ensure the cross-correlation property,
i.e., orthogonality. Fig. 2 illustrates the concept.
Since VLC has no negative component (i.e., ‘-1’), the cross-
correlation property in bipolar CDMA needs to be redesigned
for VLC. More specifically, we need to redefine the negative
components in VLC to regenerate the orthogonality in bipolar
CDMA. Observe the combination of x1 and x2 in Fig. 2. These
relationships suggest a way to transform the received signal x
to a proper form.
Here, we describe a generic transformation method that
works for any n sources. Note that in our system, the number
of lighting sources can be directly inferred from a received
frame (refer to Section III-B). Fig. 3 presents the workflow.
Each sender si has a CDMA code ci , i = 1, 2, . . . , n. Here,
we assume that these codes are mutually orthogonal. To
transmit Datai , si first converts code ci to another code,
c′i , by replacing each ‘-1’ in ci by ‘0’ and keeping each ‘1’
unchanged. This conversion introduces the unipolar property
to VLC. For example, a code (1, −1) will become (1, 0), but
a code (1, 1) will remain unchanged. Then, Datai is encoded
using c′i . So signal x is the sum of these modified coded
data. At the receiver side rix , the same code ci is used if
it wants to decode the data transmitted by si . However, the
received sequence x should go through a conversion process
before it can be decoded. The conversion is done by replacing
each value k in the sequence x by a new value 2k − n.
This process actually transforms x back to the bipolar system.
Fig. 4 illustrates the workflow using an example. In the signal
conversion block, a VLC-to-CDMA mapping table is used,
which translates 2, 1, and 0 in VLC to 2, 0, and −2 in CDMA,
respectively.
Below, we explain the signal conversion process. The basic
observation is that when we combine m ‘1’s and (n − m) ‘0’s
in VLC, the result will be m · 1 + (n − m) · 0 = m. In the case
of CDMA, these (n − m) ‘0’s are (n − m) ‘-1’s, making the
combined result m·1+(n−m)·(−1) = (2m−n). This is why
we translate each k in x by 2k − n in our conversion. In fact,
it is not hard to see that the mapping is one-to-one (i.e., from

Code
Header Data Payload
Window
PRE LSF DEL CNM CWD DPL
PRE : Preamble
LSF : Log of spreading factor
DEL : Delimiter
CNM : Code notification map
CWD : Code window delimiter
DPL : Data Payload
Darkness Brightness Darkness/Brightness END
: End of frame
Fig. 5. The proposed frame structure.
{−n, −n+2, · · · , 0, 2, · · · , n} in CDMA to {0, 1, 2, · · · , n} in
VLC). This also proves the correctness of our optical CDMA
system.
Theorem 1. The code conversion and signal conversion
procedures ensure that it is a 1-to-1 mapping between the
VLC-coded data and the CDMA-coded data.
Note that the above derivation assumes that all CDMA
codes are orthogonal. When being applied, we only need
to ensure that lighting sources with intersected regions use
orthogonal codes.
B. Frame Structure for Message Broadcasting
Below, we propose a frame structure to support message
broadcasting by LED sources. Time is slotted and a receiver
can enter the system without any pre-configuration except for
the slot length information. All needed system parameters,
such as the number of orthogonal codes and the codes that are
being used by the transmitters, can be automatically computed
by the receiver after it monitors the channel for a while.
Moreover, the receiver can eliminate external lighting noises
by measuring the designed period in the frame structure. The
control host should assign codes to lighting devices such that
no two transmitters with overlapping coverage will use the
same code. Lighting devices should be synchronized so that
their frames are aligned over time. The synchronization could
be achieved by the control of the centralized control host.
Fig. 5 shows the proposed frame structure. For simplicity,
we assume that OOK modulation is used. Here, darkness
means that the slot is transmitting a symbol ‘0’ and bright-
ness means that the slot is transmitting a symbol ‘1’. If
OOK with Manchester encoding is adopted, “darkness” and
“brightness” here are mapped to light pulses from “brightness”
to “darkness” and “darkness” to “brightness” respectively.
Each frame has three parts: header, code window, and data
payload. The header has three fields: PRE, LSF, and DEL.
Its main purpose is to indicate the beginning of a frame and
the spreading factor used in the network. PRE (preamble) is
a sequence of darkness slots long enough to distinguish the
beginning of a frame (i.e., all continuous darkness slots in
the rest of the frame should be shorter than PRE). Later on,
we will discuss how to set the length of PRE. LSF (log of
spreading factor) is a sequence of brightness slots such that
2|LSF | is the CDMA code length (i.e., the spreading factor
4
SF=1 SF=2 SF=4 SF=8 SF=16
1111111111111111
11111111
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1
1111
1 1 1 1-1-1-1-1 1 1 1 1-1-1-1-1
1 1 1 1-1-1-1-1
1 1 1 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 1 1 1 1
11
1 1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1-1-1
END 1 1-1-1 1 1-1-1
1 1-1-1 1 1-1-1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1
1 1-1-1
1 1-1-1-1-1 1 1 1 1-1-1-1-1 1 1
1 1-1-1-1-1 1 1
1 1-1-1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1 1 1-1-1
1
1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1
1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1
1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1 1
1-1 1-1
1-1 1-1-1 1-1 1 1-1 1-1-1 1-1 1
1-1 1-1-1 1-1 1
1-1 1-1-1 1-1 1-1 1-1 1 1-1 1-1
1-1
1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1
1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1
1-1-1 1 1-1-1 1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1-1
1-1-1 1
1-1-1 1-1 1 1-1 1-1-1 1-1 1 1-1
1-1-1 1-1 1 1-1
1-1-1 1-1 1 1-1-1 1 1-1 1-1-1 1
Fig. 6. Orthogonal code generation with spreading factor 2, 4, 8 and 16.
in CDMA). |LSF | represents the number of slots in the LSF
field. Here, we assume that spreading factor is no less than
the maximum number of lighting devices that intersect in an
illumination region. Thus, through monitoring the length of
LSF, the receiver can compute the spreading factor of this
network. The 2|LSF | orthogonal codes can be generated by
the Walsh-Hadamard coding method [25]. An example of code
generation is illustrated in Fig. 6. DEL (delimiter) is simply a
darkness slot followed by a brightness slot to specify the end
of the previous LSF field.
The code window has 2|LSF | + 1 slots from which a recip-
ient can find the CDMA code being used by each transmitter
that it can see. The size of CNM is 2|LSF |. For a transmitter
that uses the i-th orthogonal code, it simply sets the i-th slot
to brightness and sets the rest of the slots to darkness in
its CNM (code notification map). Since multiple transmitters
may send their code windows at the same time, the receiver
may actually see multiple brightness slots indicating the codes
of these transmitters. Therefore, it should decode the data
payload by the i-th CDMA code for each i-th slot that is
bright. This potentially generates multiple messages from the
frame. The CWD (code window delimiter) is a brightness
slot to specify the end of the code window. Finally, the data
payload field contains DPL and END. DPL (data payload) is
the broadcasting message of the transmitter encoded by optical
CDMA scheme as discussed in Section III-A. The length of
data payload can be fixed or specified by a payload length
field. END is also a brightness slot to terminate the frame.
With the existence of END, we would expect that the
preamble PRE will always be the longest continuous darkness
slots, which periodically appear in the beginning of each
frame. When a receiver enters the network, it should monitor
the longest darkness slots that it ever saw. Once the receiver
recognizes PRE, it can easily decode frames. This is why our
scheme does not need to configure a receiver a priori before
it enters the network. It remains to choose a proper length
of PRE. We recommend to set |P RE| = 2|LSF | + 1 (i.e., the
spreading factor plus 1) where | · | means length. Clearly, there
are no more than 2|LSF | consecutive darkness slots in CNM.
However, in OOK, we should avoid using CDMA code that are
all 1s and all -1s for its complement because they will generate

2|LSF | consecutive darkness slots in DPL when transmitting
data bit 0. When such data bits are put together with other
data bits, there may exist consecutive darkness slots that are
longer than 2|LSF |. In the Walsh-Hadamard codes, as long as
we avoid using all-1 code, the longest darkness slots generated
by any two consecutive data bits cannot be larger than 2|LSF |
(We omit the proof here). With this modification, the spreading
factor of the system should be chosen such that 2|LSF | − 1
is no less than the maximum number of lighting devices that
intersect in an illumination region. For example, if there are
4 lighting devices co-existing in a region, the spreading factor
should be 8 since 4 cannot satisfy the above constraint.
Finally, we remark some designs of our proposed frame
structure. First, the existence of ambient light in an indoor
environment may interfere data decoding. One possibility is
to measure the ambient light intensity during the PRE period
and then compensate this value when processing signals.
Second, one usage of the CNM field is that the brightness
slot can be utilized by the receiver as reference to measure
each transmitter’s reference light intensity of symbol ‘1’.
The receiver then converts the received light intensity to the
combined values mentioned in Section III-A according to the
combination of these references.
IV. P ROTOTYPING R ESULTS
This section presents our implementation of a VLC proto-
typing system to verify the proposed concept. Fig. 7 shows our
demonstration scenario, which is built inside a model room of
dimensions 1.2×0.8×0.3 (length × width × height) in meters.
Fig. 8 shows a demonstration scenario, where a user device is
under two lighting sources, and the snapshot on the right shows
the decoded IDs of lighting sources. Fig. 9 shows our system
architecture, including hardware and software components.
The system can be divided into three parts: control host,
actuator and LEDs, and user devices. Below, we describe each
part in details.
A. Control Host
The control host is implemented by NXP Jennic JN5148
[26]. JN5148 contains a 32-bit RISC CPU with clock speeds
4 ∼ 32MHz. In addition, there are up to 21 digital input
output (DIO) ports, 4 12-bit ADCs, and 2 12-bit DACs
in a JN5148. The control host contains five components:
broadcasting handler, code handler, message encoding handler,
frame configuration handler, and frame filling handler.
• Broadcasting handler: This component is responsible for
preparing broadcasting messages to lighting devices. The
broadcasting messages for different devices can be set by
the system administrator or an external application server.
When a message is ready, this handler forwards it to the
message encoding handler.
• Code handler: The two main tasks are (i) assigning
CDMA codes to lighting devices according to their
interference relationships and (ii) translating the codes
according to the code conversion algorithm discussed in
Section III-A. For (i), the handler classifies each lighting
5
device to a coding set by applying an independent set al-
gorithm according to devices’ interference relationships.
The lighting devices of the same coding set are then
assigned the same CDMA code. The code assignment
guarantees no interference among lighting devices in
the same coding set. Note that the code assignment
problem has been proved to NP-complete (by reducing
to the graph coloring problem) [27]. So a heuristic has
to be used here. Many heuristics have been proposed in
the literatures [28][29]. For (ii), the bipolar codes are
converted to unipolar VLC codes. After this conversion,
it sends these converted codes to the message encoding
handler.
• Message encoding handler: The main task of this com-
ponent is to conduct the encoding process, by spreading
each data bit to multiple chips according to their VLC
codes. The encoded messages are then sent to the frame
handler.
• Frame configuration handler: The code settings deter-
mined by the code handler are used by this component to
decide some important frame parameters, such as length
of PRE, length of LSF, and content of CNM. Then, it
provides these settings to the frame filling handler.
• Frame filling handler: This component serves as the
interface between the control host and the light devices.
It is also responsible for frame construction. A frame is
constructed by combining the encoded messages received
from the message encoding handler and the information
received from the frame configuration handler. These
frames are then transmitted to their corresponding light-
ing devices.
B. Actuator and LEDs
An actuator controls one lighting device according to the
frames received from the control host. In our prototype, the
actuators are also implemented by NXP Jennic JN5148. The
modulation handler of an actuator modulates its broadcasting
frames by OOK modulation and propagates control signals to
the optical transmitter. The connection between an actuator and
its LEDs is through DIOs of JN5148. The optical transmitters
of a lighting source are a set of white light LEDs as shown
in Fig. 7(b). The optical transmitters generate white light
according to the commands from the actuator.
C. User Device
The user device, which is shown in Fig. 7(c), is an NXP
Jennic JN5148 with a Si photodiode [30] as its optical receiver.
It converts received VLC signals into broadcasting messages
and can forward the messages to any mobile applications.
It contains five components: optical receiver, frame structure
analyzer, code handler, signal conversion handler, and message
decoding handler.
• Optical receiver: This component is made of Si pho-
todiode. Si photodiode can perceive the received light
intensity and convert it to an analog signal. We utilize an
ADC converter in Jennic JN5148 to convert the analog
signal to a digital signal. Then the stream of perceived
 6

Actuator

Actuator Jennic module

White User
Light LEDs device

White Light LEDs USB interface

Si photodiode

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 7. (a) The prototype of our VLC broadcasting system inside a model room. (b) An actuator connected to LEDs. (c) The user device.

LEDs

Mobile device
IDs of the two
LEDs are decoded
User device

(a) (b)
Fig. 8. A demonstration scenario: (a) The user device is under two lighting devices. (b) The decoded IDs of the two lighting devices.

digital signals is sent to the frame structure analyzer for Control Host

further processing. Broadcasting handler

• Frame structure analyzer: Its main task is to extract Broadcast messages

Code handler
frames from the digital signals by searching the PRE field Converted VLC codes Code settings
of each frame header and to retrieve the fields of a frame Message Frame configuration
encoding handler handler
according to our frame format. For each frame, its LSF Encoded messages Network settings
and CNM are sent to the code handler. Then, the signals Frame filling handler

of the data payload DPL are sent to the signal conversion External application
handler. User Device Broadcast messages
• Code handler: From LSF, it first calculates the spreading Actuator & LEDs Broadcasting frames
Message decoding handler
factor. Then, from CNM, the user device can further Modulation handler
Code set Converted signal of DPL
Control commands n Signal conversion
calculate the number of sources that it can see and the set Optical transmitters
Code handler
handler
of CDMA codes used by these sources. The set of codes LSF and CNM Signal of DPL
Frame structure Optical
that are being used by these sources is sent to the message analyzer receiver
VLC signals
decoding handler to decode the broadcast messages.
• Signal conversion handler: This component implements
the signal conversion algorithm in Section III-A. It recon- Fig. 9. The architecture of our VLC broadcasting system.
structs the bipolar signals, which can be processed by the
original CDMA decoding procedure. Then the converted
signal of DPL is sent to the message decoding handler
for further processing. room model. The system parameters for our experiments are
• Message decoding handler: This handler takes the con- listed in Table I. We define four types of errors (i.e., non-DPL,
verted signal of DPL and decodes it by each CDMA code chip, symbol, and frame) for realizing the influence of noises
in the code set provided by the code handler. The decoded to the proposed frame format. The non-DPL error means that
messages can be sent through USB or Bluetooth interface at least one bit in the PRE and CNM fields which are not
to any external applications. CDMA-encoded of a frame is incorrect The chip and symbol
errors are for evaluating errors in the DPL field. As discussed
in Section III-A, a data bit is spread by a code sequence.
D. Performance Verification We call the bits in the spreading code sequence chips. The
We conducted some experiments to understand the trans- chip error means that some decoded bits in DPL field are
mission errors under different conditions in our prototyping different from the corresponding bits in the combined signals.
 7

TABLE I of a lighting range than at center of a lighting range. Note

PARAMETERS USED IN OUR EXPERIMENTS . that the correctness ratios of non-DPL are still 100% since
signals of PRE and CNM fields can be easily recognized.
3) Varying the moving speed of user device: We measure the
Parameter Setting
correctness ratio while the user device is moved slowly
Frequency of LEDs 1kHz
Slot length of each frame 1ms
in our model room. Fig. 13 shows the experiment result.
Sampling rate of user device 5kHz The result indicates that the correctness ratios of data
Spreading factor 4 (except for experiment 4) payload (i.e., chip and symbol) will degrade as users are
Position of user device p1 in Fig. 10(a) (except for experiment 2)
Maximum lighting devices 4
in movement. The main reason may be due to the fact that
Data bits for lighting devices D1 :{10101010} the reference of ‘light on’ for each LED is unstable when
D2 :{01000010} decoding the combined signals. Moreover, the non-DPL
D3 :{01000110}
D4 :{01000111}
field has also a few errors in this experiment.
Transmitted frames more than 10, 000 4) Varying the CDMA code length: We choose different
CDMA code lengths (i.e., spreading factors) for eval-
uation. In this experiment, there are only two lighting
devices in the code length ‘2’ scenario and there are
four lighting sources in code length ‘4’, ‘8’, and ‘16’
scenarios. Fig. 14 shows the experiment result. We do
D4 D3 D4 D3
not plot the correctness ratios of non-DPL since spreading
P1 P3
P4 code mechanism is not used in the header and code win-
P2
dow fields. The result indicates that correctness ratios of
D2 D1 D2 D1
symbols and frames will slightly decrease as we increase
the code length by the definitions of the errors previously
defined. We may consider to apply error detection or
correction code to the frame structure in the future.
(a) (b)
5) Varying the distance and toggle frequency of ambient
Fig. 10. Positions of the user device in our experiments. (a) p1 is at the light: We conduct an experiment to evaluate the influence
center of intersected region of the four LEDs and p2 is near the boundary of
two LEDs’ lighting range. (b) p3 is at the center of intersected region of the of ambient light. As we discussed in Section III-B, we
three LEDs and p4 is near the boundary of one LED’s lighting range. utilize PRE period to measure the ambient light for com-
pensation of signal processing. Fig. 15(a) and Fig. 15(b)
show experiment results with and without ambient light
The symbol error means that some bits in the chip sequence are processing, respectively. The ambient light is an LED
incorrect such that the original data bit cannot be recovered. light source without carrying any data and is fixed above
The frame error means that there is at least one error bit in a the rooftop. The rooftop of the room model is a clear
received frame. Below, we use the correctness ratio, which is acrylic sheet, where the ambient light can penetrate.
the percentage of correct data in the corresponding context, to Then, we vary the distance between the ambient light and
make comparison under different conditions. the rooftop. As shown in Fig. 15(b), a closer ambient
1) Varying the number of lighting devices: We measure the light would heavily affect the correctness ratios when
decoding errors of a static user device while increasing there is no ambient light processing. Furthermore, we
the number of lighting devices in an illumination region. also toggle the ambient light with a fixed frequency for
The user device is placed at p1 of Fig. 10(a). Fig. 11 evaluating the influence of the flickering light. Fig. 15(c)
shows the experiment result. The result indicates that the shows that the ambient light processing is hard to handle
correctness ratio of the non-DPL fields are all 100%. the flickering light since light noises vary in a frame
The reason is that there is no simultaneous transmission frequently. However, the flickering light is seldom in our
among lighting devices in the PRE and CNM fields. daily life and the sunlight is the major ambient light
As we expect, the correctness ratios of other schemes which can be handled.
decrease while the number of lighting devices increases.
Since all lighting devices broadcast their messages in the
V. C ONCLUSIONS
data payload field, errors may occur when recovering
the combined signals from the sensed light intensity. In this paper, we have presented a framework which ex-
However, the correctness ratios are all above 96%. ploits CDMA-based VLC technique to tackle the interference
2) Placing user device at different positions: We place the problem among lighting sources. We consider using white
user device at different positions, p1 , p2 , p3 , and p4 in light LEDs as the optical transmitters and photodiode as
Fig. 10 to measure these errors. Fig. 12 shows the experi- optical receivers. So the cost to build such a VLC network
ment result at these positions. The result indicates that the should be quite low and, even better, the network can coexist
correctness ratio decreases when the user device moves with our illumination system. By using the CDMA technique,
to the boundary of lighting range. Thus, decoding the we have shown that VLC transmitters and receivers can be
combined signals may become more difficult at boundary designed with simple hardware and lightweight computation.
 8

Non-DPL Chip Symbol Frame Non-DPL Chip Symbol Frame

100 100
Correctness ratio (%)

Correctness ratio (%)

99 95

98 90

97 85

96 80

95 75
1 2 3 4 p1 p2 p3 p4
Number of lighting devices Position of user device

Fig. 11. Comparison of correctness ratios by increasing the lighting Fig. 12. Comparison of correctness ratios when the user device is placed
devices in an illumination region. at different positions.

Non-DPL Chip Symbol Frame Chip Symbol Frame

100 100

Correctness ratio (%)

Correctness ratio (%)

98
90
96

94
80
92

70 90
2 4 2 4 8 16
Movement speed (cm/sec) Code length

Fig. 13. Comparison of correctness ratios by varying the moving speed Fig. 14. Comparison of correctness ratios by varying the applied CDMA
of the user device. code length.

Non-DPL Chip Symbol Frame Non-DPL Chip Symbol Frame Non-DPL Chip Symbol

100 100 100

90 90
Correctness ratio (%)

Correctness ratio (%)

Correctness ratio (%)

80
80 80
70 70 60
60 60
50 50 40

40 40
20
30 30
20 20 0
6cm 9cm 12cm 6cm 9cm 12cm 5kHz6cm 5kHz9cm 0.1kHz6cm 0.1kHz9cm
Distance of ambient light above the roof Distance of ambient light above the roof Toggle frequency and distance of ambient light

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 15. Comparison of correctness ratios by varying the distance of ambient light (a) with and (b) without ambient light processing and varying the toggle
frequency of ambient light (c).

The unipolar-bipolar sequencing for optical CDMA allows practical enough for real usage and deserves further studies.
the CDMA technique to be used in unipolar systems. We
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9
Yan-Ann Chen Yan-Ann Chen received his B.S.
and M.S. degrees from the National Dong Hwa
University and National Chiao Tung University, Tai-
wan, in 2005 and 2007, respectively. He is currently
pursuing Ph.D. in the Department of Computer Sci-
ence, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. His
research interests include pervasive computing and
internet of things.
Yi-Ting Chang Yi-Ting Chang received his B.S.
and M.S. degrees from the Tamkang University
and National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in
2011 and 2013, respectively. His research interests
include wireless sensor networks and visible light
communications.
Yu-Chee Tseng Yu-Chee Tseng got his Ph.D. in
Computer and Information Science from the Ohio
State University in January of 1994. He was/is
Chairman (2005-2009) and Dean (2011-present),
College of Computer Science, National Chiao-Tung
University, Taiwan.
Dr. Tseng has been awarded as NCTU Chair Pro-
fessor (2011-present) and Y. Z. Hsu Scientific Chair
Professor (2012-2013). He received Outstanding
Research Award (National Science Council, 2001,
2003, and 2009), Best Paper Award (Int’l Conf.
on Parallel Processing, 2003), Elite I. T. Award (2004), and Distinguished
Alumnus Award (Ohio State University, 2005), and Y. Z. Hsu Scientific
Paper Award (2009). His research interests include mobile computing, wireless
communication, and sensor networks. Dr. Tseng is an IEEE Fellow. He
served/serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Trans. on Vehicular Technology,
IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing, IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed
Systems, and IEEE Internet of Things Journal. His h-index is more than 50.
Wen-Tsuen Chen Wen-Tsuen Chen (M’87-SM’90-
F’94) received the B.S. degree in nuclear engi-
neering from the National Tsing Hua University,
Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 1970 and the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in electrical engineering and computer sci-
ences from the University of California Berkeley,
Berkeley, CA, USA, in 1973 and 1976, respectively.
Since 1976, he has been with the National Tsing
Hua University, where he is currently a Distin-
guished Chair Professor with the Department of
Computer Science, College of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science. He has served as the Chairman of the Department, as
the Dean of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and
as the President of the National Tsing Hua University. Since March 2012, he
has been with Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, as a Distinguished Research
Fellow with the Institute of Information Science. His research interests include
computer networks, wireless sensor networks, mobile computing, and parallel
computing.
Dr. Chen is a Fellow of the Chinese Technology Management Association.
He is the Founding General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on
Parallel and Distributed Systems and the General Chair of the 2000 IEEE In-
ternational Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, among others. He
is currently a lifelong National Chair of the Ministry of Education of Taiwan.
He was a recipient of numerous awards for his academic accomplishments
in computer networking and parallel processing, including the Outstanding
Research Award of the National Science Council, the Academic Award in
Engineering from the Ministry of Education, and the Technical Achievement
Award and the Taylor L. Booth Education Award of the IEEE Computer
Society.