High Speed and Low Cost One-to-Many VLC Using Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystals

Visible light communication (VLC) is considered a solution to the scarcity of radio frequency communication resources due to its abundant spectrum resources and rapid intensity modulation capability. It has a wide range of applications in indoor positioning and intelligent transport systems. For example, in Connected and Autonomous Vehicle scenarios, VLC uses traffic lights to warn vehicles at different distances in abnormal situations, thus preventing potential traffic accidents. To facilitate fast, long-range VLC communication in such one-to-many communication scenarios, current systems typically use optical cameras or digital micro-mirror devices as receivers. However, there are several challenges associated with these devices. Optical cameras have a limited sampling rate, resulting in reduced effective throughput. Other receivers, such as digital micro-mirror devices, are relatively costly, which hinders their widespread use. In this paper, we propose a novel, low-cost, and high-speed VLC scheme. We use a low-cost material called Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystal as the measurement matrix, reducing the cost by 99% compared to digital micro-mirror devices. We implement hierarchical coding based on compressive sensing to reduce data redundancy and thus improve communication throughput. Empirical experiments conducted using four pho-to diodes at the receiver show a 120% improvement in overall throughput compared to existing one-to-many VLC systems.