PC to PC Data Transmission using Visible Light Communication

Visible Light Communication (VLC) can be concisely stated as Data Transmission Through Illumination. Data transmission through visible light communication is much more secure and is capable of achieving high data transmission rates as compared to existing conventional wireless technologies like WiFi, Bluetooth, Wi-max, etc., which uses radio frequency spectrum. This project aims at building a wireless VLC system capable of transmitting text data between two computers using visible light. A Light Emitting Diode (LED) is used as the transmitter, air as the transmission medium and a Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) as the receiving component. Text data gets transmitted as strings of 1s and 0s as the LED flickers on and off, rapidly at a rate undetectable to the human eye. This binary data is received by the LDR, converted into the appropriate format and displayed on the output screen. Both hardware (Arduino Uno microcontroller) and software (Matlab) are required for successful data transmission and reception. Two computers are used as the end devices. The computers, with the help of Arduino IDE installed in them, are used to interface software to the hardware.