Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of LED Lamp for Visible Light Communications

Visible light communications (VLC) are an emerging technology that uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodiodes to provide high-speed communication between devices employing the visible light spectrum. Taking advantage of a large unregulated spectrum with capacity for gigabit per second data rates, VLC has the potential to enable the more recent and future telecommunications technologies, such as IoT, 5G and beyond, to unlock their full capabilities, either acting as a sole solution or supporting traditional radiofrequency communications. One of the goals of VLC is to employ illumination LEDs as access points. In this paper we analyze the communication and illumination performance of an LED lamp. Both theoretical and experimental analysis are conducted and results compared. Theoretical analysis are conducted with VLC mathematical model and also with ray-tracing simulations employing the a commercial software. We show that the LED lamp is capable of providing both communication and illumination simultaneously under the proposed scenario. Our results present strong correlation between theoretical and experimental results, indicating that the theoretical model is robust.