The Demonstration of Wireless Access via Visible
Light Communications
Liwei Ding, Fang Liu, Zhiqiang Yu, Yongjin Wang*
Institute of Communication Technology, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Jiangsu, China
Email: wangyj@njupt.edu.cn
Abstract—Wireless data transmission via visible light has
been significantly explored with the development of white-LED.
In this paper, we report a wireless access system via visible light
communication (VLC) technology. In our demonstration, the
custom-made USB board serves as the transceiver consisting of a
LED-based transmitter and a photodiode-based receiver. Two
USB boards are connected to two computers respectively,
constructing a communication system. One computer, or an
ARM development board being linked to the network acts as a
router enables computer to have access to Internet via the visible
light channel. The prototype demonstrates a transmission data
rate up to 460800 baud without packet loss at a distance of 30cm.
A 0.3W white LED is used and a 10-6 bit error ratio (BER) is
achieved. The eye diagram performance of the VLC system is
presented as well as the packet loss of the visible light link.
Keywords—wireless Internet access, USB interface, visible light
communication.
I. INTRODUCTION
As a light source, light emitting diode (LED) is becoming
more and more important for its advantages such as low power
consumption, high luminous efficiency, and long lifetime [1].
With its rapid on-off response characteristics, LED turns out to
be a key component in VLC. Driven by the progress in LED
for solid state lighting and the potential of wireless data
transmission [2,3], VLC based on white LED has drawn a
strong attention in both academia and industry [4]. Numerous
researches have been made in this new promising field. As is
reported in IEEE publication, using a four-channel multiple-
input multiple-output link with each channel transmitting
signals at 250Mb/s by OFDM modulation, the indoor wireless
VLC system can achieve a total data rate at 1Gb/s [5].
With the great progress being made, it seems to be more
urgent to realize the VLC accessing network. It is a significant
research orientation to get a high-speed and large capacity
access to Internet through visible light channel. Imagine this,
open the door and turn on the ceiling light, take out your
computer or mobile phone which is equipped with an optical
receiver, surfing online becomes so easy and fascinating. The
light is the router! In some special environment such as railway
or subway, visible light access network shows more
conveniences over the instability of wireless radio frequency
wave at present. Recently, data transmission between two PCs
or ceiling light and subscriber have been demonstrated [6,7,8,
9,10]. In [6], simplex and duplex systems are built up for signal
transmission between two PCs which mainly contain characters.
978-1-4799-0308-5/13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
In [7], by using optical fiber as optical transmitter, subscriber
in coverage area can move freely with a high bandwidth
connection combining with Wi-Fi localization technique.
In our proposed system, a local area network (LAN) is
constructed through visible light link. Two PCs are connected
through VLC channel with a USB bridge module. One of them,
which has been linked to Internet, acts as a server. The other
one, which has no connectivity, is the client. Based on Point-to-
Point (PPP) protocol [11], the PC without Internet connection
can access to Internet through VLC line-of-sight (LOS) [12]
channel link, while the other PC is functioning as a router.
With the number of LED being large scaled, the transmission
distance can be improved and lighting can be achieved at the
same time.
The rest of paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the
system design of our proposed scheme is outlined. In Section
III, the instructions under Linux are given to gain the visible
light link between two PCs for network accessing, and the
VLC system for network accessing to Internet is also
demonstrated. In section IV, the experimental measurements
and system performance of eye diagram, BER performance and
packet loss are illustrated. The conclusions and further work
are drawn in Section V.
II. SYSTEM DESIGN
A VLC system is designed to demonstrate Internet
accessing through visible light channel. To realize duplex
communication, the transceiver involves an off-the-shelf LED
(0.3W) as light transmitter and a PD (S6968) as light signal
receiver. The proposed transceiver block diagram is outlined in
Fig.1. Encapsulating with a USB interface, the transceiver can
be easily linked to PC. The chip CP2102 is used to achieve the
signal conversion from USB differential signal to TTL or
inverse. Electric signal coming from Internet is then forwarded
to voltage follower circuit (OPA354) to amplify the current,
maintaining the signal voltage as a constant value. Then signal
after OOK modulation and current amplification is directly
driving LED for transmitting information. Here we adopt the
Intensity Modulation/Direct Detection (IM/DD) method to
fulfill the modulation and demodulation process of light signal.
At the receiver, the weak current signal received by PD
passes through a low pass filter followed by a custom amplifier
for recovery. A decision circuit (LT1715) is used as a single
threshold voltage comparator with a reference voltage level to
achieve the signal decision. Fig.2 gives a model picture of the
custom-designed transceiver. LED is in a focusing cup to emit
light directly to receiver. When being plugged into the USB
interface of two PCs, the transceivers can establish a visible
light channel at a proper distance to start the process for
sending and receiving data packets. Two transceivers are
horizontally aligned for the sake of system stability in the LOS
channel model.

Fig.3 The work principle of PPP protocol.

Hardware
USB USB‐ Visible light  Visible light
Computer
Structure TTL module

Fig.1 The proposed transceiver block diagram. Direct serial connection

Software Computer
Level

Fig.4 The structure of VLC hardware level and software level.

With the driver of chip CP2102 being setup on the two PCs,
the transceiver module can be recognized when being inserted
into the PCs. Note is needed that the transceiver is designed of
USB interface for whole power supply (5V). PPP protocol is
immediately applied to establish a visible light link for data
communication after corresponding computer instructions
being compiled successfully. As it is mentioned above, PC B
Fig.2 A model picture of the custom-designed transceiver. acts as client while PC A is the router to Internet. The overall
instruction flow of server side and client side is given in Fig.5,
III. INSTRUCTION COMPILING respectively.
In our prototype, one PC is linked to external Internet by
Ethernet or Wi-Fi, while the other PC is away from Internet.
Here we denote the PC connecting to Internet as A, the other
one as B. To realize Internet access of B through A which acts
as a router via visible light channel, a communication protocol
is in need to keep them contacting with each other. Because the
channel is LOS model and the system is designed in forms of
point to point communication, we choose an existing protocol,
PPP, which is a data link layer protocol designed for data
packets transmission between two same level units [ 13 ].
Meanwhile, PPP supports full duplex operation and transmits
packets in order. Its features are particularly appropriate for
visible light medium channel. Fig.3 gives the working principle
of PPP, which is mainly containing three steps: link
establishment, identity authentication, and network control
consultation.
At the hardware level, the USB-TTL module is used to
connect the UART port of visible light module to the computer.
Thus, at the software level, the connection can be seen as a
direct serial connection. Then, we use the PPP protocol to build
the network over this connection. Fig.4 shows the structure of
hardware level and software level of VLC access network.
Fig.5 The instructions of server-side (top) and client-side (bottom).
 IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A physical map of our proposed system is shown in Fig.6.
The left PC is server-side while the right one is client-side.
Based on the two man-made modules and system structure, we
carry out experimental measurements to obtain the
performance of the system. Firstly, the eye pattern of the TTL
signal before decision circuit versus data rate is studied. Then
the relationship between data rate and bit error rate (BER) is
also investigated. Finally, we test the packet loss ratio and
transmit packet rate under VLC channel access network.

Fig.8 Eye diagram waveforms after direct detection without filtering and
being amplified at (a) 1Mbit/s data rate, b) 2Mbit/s data rate.

Fig.6 The physical map of our proposed system.
A. Eye pattern diagram
The measurements are carried out with the configuration
shown in Fig.7, where the arbitrary waveform generator and
oscilloscope are replaced by two PCs to make the signal clear
in communication process. Imposed by arbitrary OOK NRZ
data (PN23) at a speed of 1Mbps and 2Mbps, the eye diagrams
at the receiver of signals after optical conversation are
presented in Fig.8, from which we can acquire that the signals
received without amplification and filtering are clear, showing
error free performance of the system. The eye diagrams
indicate that the signal can be correctly recovered after decision
C. Packet Loss Ratio
The VLC access network system is demonstrated for
applying to data transmission, as shown in Fig.6. Under the
environment of Linux programming, we set a series of bit rate
to test the packet loss ratio and packet transmission rate of
Internet data. By using the Ping instruction, it shows no packet
loss when the bit rate is up to 460800 baud, and in generally, 5
packets will take about 6ms to send and receive. Every packet
contains data from 8 bytes to 1508 bytes.
1E-7 BER
Bit Error Rate(BER)

circuit.
1E-9

1E-11

（a）
1E-13
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5
Data Rate (MHz)
0

Fig.7 Testing configuration block diagram. （b）

Normalized response(dB)

-3

B. BER performance -6

We also measured the BER characteristics at different -9

transmission rates using Agilent 81250A. Signal generated by
bit error detector is sent to TTL part and transmitted through -12
visible light model. The output TTL signal of the transceiver is Normalized response
returned to bit error detector for closed loop testing under the -15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
condition of time synchronization. All BERs are below 10-6 Frequency(MHz)
when data rate goes up to 3Mbit/s. The curve of BER vs data
rate is showed in Figure 9(a). We can find that the BER
Fig.9 (a) BER versus data rate, (b) Frequency response curves of the white
performance is mainly restricted to 3dB bandwidth of the LED.
white LED emitter, whose normalized response is shown in
Figure 9(b).
 V. CONCLUSION
The paper develops a basic VLC access network under
Linux through the transceiver module developed on USB
interface. The proposed transceiver contains one LED and one
PD for short visible light channel, and is measured at 2Mbps
with clear eye diagram and low BER. The bit rate of Internet
data transmission between two PCs can be up to 460800 baud
without packet loss at a distance of 30cm. This work constructs
a local area network through visible light communication and
offers a new way to wireless communication between digital
mobile terminals by using PPP protocol.
In future, LED array will be developed to increase the
transmission distance. Modulation scheme and equalization
method should be adopted to improve transmission rate.
Transceiver will be updated in forms of the interface being
inserted to Ethernet directly to improve the data rate.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is jointly supported by NSFC (11104147), Jiangsu
973 project (BK2011027), and research project (NY211001,
BJ211026).

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