1026 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 33, NO.

18, SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

A High-Speed Visible Light Communication

System Using Pairs of Micro-Size LEDs
Shi Zhang , Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Zixian Wei , Zhiyuan Cao , Graduate Student Member, IEEE,
Keming Ma, Chien-Ju Chen, Meng-Chyi Wu , Yuhan Dong , Member, IEEE,
and H. Y. Fu , Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract— We designed and experimentally demonstrated a the light sources for downlink VLC systems can be integrated
spatial diversity visible light communication (VLC) system based in our daily illumination devices.
on a blue micro-size LED consisting of two parallel pixels. Since Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are widely used in VLC
the size-dependent effect on the electrical and optical perfor-
mance of LED, a group of such LEDs with the same structure systems due to the low cost and easy integration. However,
but different pixel sizes from 75-µm to 175-µm diameters are commercial LEDs with low −3 dB electrical-to-optical (E-O)
fabricated and packaged to optimize the system. The exper- modulation bandwidth of about 10-20 MHz limit the data rates
imental results showed the trade-off between the modulation of VLC systems [3]. A major issue is the size of commercial
depth and bandwidth. Furthermore, the system using a pair of LED chip, i.e., 1 mm or greater, which introduces a relatively
75-µm micro-LEDs can reach up to 1.20-Gbps data rate, which
is the highest among the packaged LED group, with the bit-error large device capacitance and restrict the cut-off bandwidth of
rate (BER) below the forward error correction (FEC) floor of a LED. In recent years, micro-size LEDs (micro-LEDs) have
3.8 × 10−3 based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing been reported to be utilized in VLC systems. Their tiny pixel
(OFDM) and a simple spatial diversity scheme. This work is sizes and high injected current density improve the bandwidth
conducive to the system design based on large-scale micro-LED up to several hundred MHz, however their tiny luminous
arrays in the future.
area also decreases the light intensity and signal-to-noise ratio
Index Terms— Visible light communication, micro-LED, (SNR) and then limits the spectrum utilization. To expand the
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, spatial diversity. coverage and increase the output power, arrayed micro-LEDs
were fabricated and used in the VLC systems. Islim et al.
I. I NTRODUCTION presented a segmented independent-driven micro-LED array
and achieved 11.95-Gbps data rate with a distance of 27.5 cm
V ISIBLE light communication (VLC) can provide illumi-
nation and high-speed data transmission for users simul-
taneously and has been considered as an alternative technology
using a single pixel of micro-LED array [4]. Xie et al. set
up a long-distance VLC system using a series-biased micro-
for 6G networks [2]. VLC systems employing visible light LED array and obtained the data rate of Gbps level over a
to carry the information in unlicensed band have no harm to link extended to 20 m [5]. However, these arrayed micro-LED
the body and no electromagnetic interference (EMI) to other systems are all point-to-point architectures, which requires a
devices. In addition, VLC systems are energy-efficient since relatively serious alignment. In addition, the pixel size and
injected current have a great effect on system performance
Manuscript received May 18, 2021; accepted June 21, 2021. Date of including bandwidth and luminous flux. Huang et al. fabri-
publication June 29, 2021; date of current version August 13, 2021. This work
was supported in part by the Science, Technology and Innovation Commission cated and packaged 4 × 4 arrayed micro-size LEDs, measured
of Shenzhen Municipality under Grant JCYJ20200109143016563 and Grant and analyzed the characteristics of various pixel sizes with
JCYJ20180507183815699 and in part by the Overseas Research Cooperation different injected currents including luminous flux per pixel
Fund of Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School under Grant
HW2018003. This letter was presented in part at the Asia Communica- and −3 dB bandwidth [6], [7].
tion and Photonics Conference (ACP) 2020. [1]. (Corresponding authors: In this letter, we consider a spatial diversity VLC system
Yuhan Dong; H. Y. Fu.) using a pair of LED pixels which are parallelly packaged
Shi Zhang, Zhiyuan Cao, Keming Ma, and Yuhan Dong are with the Shen-
zhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, in one shell. The transmitter employs direct current optical
China, and also with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM)
University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: zs19@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn; modulation and bit-power allocation. Two spots at the user
caozy19@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn; mkm19@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn;
dongyuhan@sz.tsinghua.edu.cn). end set up two receivers which adopt maximal ratio combining
Zixian Wei and H. Y. Fu are with the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen (MRC) method to combine the signals from two pixels. Such
Institute (TBSI), Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China (e-mail: a spatial diversity structure can expand the coverage and
weizx17@tsinghua.org.cn; hyfu@sz.tsinghua.edu.cn).
Chien-Ju Chen and Meng-Chyi Wu are with the Institute of Electronics improve the robustness of the system in which a user can
Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 300044, Taiwan (e-mail: access the network even if one of two paths is interrupted
103063516@office365.nthu.edu.tw; mcwu@ee.nthu.edu.tw). by blockage, misalignment and etc. In addition, we have
Color versions of one or more figures in this letter are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2021.3093339. fabricated and packaged a group of LEDs with the same
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2021.3093339 structure but different pixel sizes to verify the size-dependent
1041-1135 © 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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ZHANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED VLC SYSTEM USING PAIRS OF MICRO-SIZE LEDs 1027

Fig. 1. (a) Cross section of the blue LED, (b) photograph of the packaged
LEDs with 75, 100, 125, 150, and 175 μm pixels.
Fig. 3. −3 dB bandwidth of various size pixels at different current density.

Fig. 2. Light-current-voltage curves of various size pixels with packaging.

effect of LEDs and optimize the system. There is a trade-

off between modulation depth and bandwidth, so we repeat
Fig. 4. Diagram of VLC system based on DCO-OFDM and spatial diversity.
the experiments with different pixel sizes and compare their
performance. To the best of our knowledge, the data transmis-
sion experiments for different size pixels of micro-LEDs are show that the light power of the large pixels is higher than that
presented for the first time in this letter. Experimental results of the small ones attributing to the larger luminous area. Fig. 3
show that 1.20-Gbps transmission rate can be achieved, which shows the −3 dB bandwidth of each pixel with various current
is the highest data rate in our LED group, with 2.4 × 10−3 bit density. The relationship between −3 dB cut-off  bandwidth
error rate (BER) based on a 75-μm paired micro-LEDs. and current density is given by f −3 d B = B J/4qdπ 2,
which can explain why the bandwidth is higher at high current
II. E XPERIMENTS density, where B is the bimolecular coefficient, J is the
A. Device Structure and Characteristics injected current density, q is the elementary charge, and d is
Fig. 1(a) shows the detailed schematic structure of our the thickness of the active layer. Furthermore, the small size
LEDs. Each pixel is grown on a c-plane sapphire substrate pixels can reach higher bandwidth because of the high level
using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). current density and smaller device capacitance. As a result,
The epitaxial structure of a LED consists of a u-GaN layer, the −3 dB E-O bandwidth of the 75-μm LED can reach up to
a N-GaN layer, a multiple quantum well (MQW), an electron 300 MHz. In addition, we can see that the values of different
blocking layer (EBL), and a P-GaN layer. Indium tin oxide pixels at the same current density are very close. This is due
(ITO) is deposited as current spreading layer to contact the to the fact that the bandwidth of LED at such scale relies
P-GaN layer and silicon dioxide (SiO 2) is deposited as heavily on the carrier lifetime in device and carrier lifetime
isolation layer. We have fabricated two identical pixels for depends on the current density [8]. And the RC factor has only
each diameter of 75 μm, 100 μm, 125 μm, 150 μm, and a little effect on the bandwidth. In a word, these experimental
175 μm respectively, then connected two pixels of each size results illustrate that small size pixels have better bandwidth
in parallel and packaged with epoxy resin. Finally, we have performance while large size pixels have better illumination
obtained five packaged blue LEDs as shown in Fig. 1(b). performance.
We have driven the two pixels simultaneously and measured
the sum of their output light power, which is twice as large as a B. Experimental Setup
single pixel, the forward voltage, and −3 dB bandwidth at dif- We set up a VLC system over a link of 0.6 m using our
ferent injected currents for each LED. Fig. 2 shows the light- packaged LEDs as shown in Fig. 4. The intended digital
current-voltage (L-I-V ) curves which illustrates that the pixel signals are generated and processed in MATLAB based on
size affects the electrical and optical characteristics obviously. OFDM. The whole channel is divided into 255 sub-channels
To avoid damaging a LED, we increase the injected current up where the modulation order and power are pre-allocated based
to 70 mA. Then the forward voltage and output light power on the SNR of each channel which can be measured using error
rise gradually and tend to reach saturation. The L-I-V curves vector magnitude (EVM) method. Pilot symbols are inserted

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1028 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 33, NO. 18, SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

right before the data to facilitate channel estimation. Then

Hermitian symmetry and inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT)
are imposed to generate real time-domain signal. After that,
we add cyclic prefixes (CP) to resist inter-symbol interference
(ISI) and clip the signal to decrease the peak-to-average power
ratio (PAPR). The signal approximately follows Gaussian
distribution zero mean and variance of σ 2 . We therefore cut off
the signal with values out of the range [−3.2σ, 3.2σ ] [9] and
are able to decrease the PAPR about 4 dB in the experiments.
Finally, the digital signal can be loaded into the arbitrary wave-
form generator (AWG, AWG7101, Tektronix) and converted to
Fig. 5. Measured SNR of various LEDs at different frequencies.
analog signal. The sampling rate of AWG is adjusted according
to the modulation bandwidth of the LED.
Then the signal obtains about 20-dB gain through an photoelectric conversion coefficient, H is the channel gain, Pt
amplifier (AMP, ZX60-43+, Mini-Circuits) and incorporates is the transmitting optical power, and σ 2 is the noise variance.
an offset by bias-T (ZFBT-6GW+, Mini-Circuits) and DC The noise power of each LED is roughly equivalent. Therefore,
power supply (DP832, RIGOL), which provides injected cur- the SNR at each sub-channel mainly depends on the output
rent for the LED. Since too low current can cause obvious power of the LED and the channel gain at the corresponding
nonlinear distortion and low bandwidth whereas too high frequency band. As we expected, the small size LEDs have
current can also cause nonlinear distortion and serious self- more flat curves but lower peak SNR based on the output light
heat phenomenon because of the LED saturation, the injected power and bandwidth as shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3. The SNR
current for the LED should be chosen carefully for a proper curves present approximatively low-pass characteristic where
dynamic range and bandwidth. According to our test exper- the response at DC-around frequency band subsides because
iments, 40 mA is an appropriate current value. Then the of the low gain of the bias-T and the amplifier. Since the peak
LED consisting of two parallel pixels is driven to emit two SNR depends on the output light power of the LED, a larger
beams which pass through a transmitting (TX) lens, a 0.6-m light power dynamic range corresponds to higher signal ampli-
free space and a receiving (RX) lens, and then are captured tude and modulation depth. Therefore the 175-μm LED has
by a high-sensitivity silicon avalanche photodiode module the highest peak SNR of 23.26 dB, while the 75-μm LED has
(APD, APD210, Thorlabs) and converted to electrical signals the lowest peak value of 18.44 dB. However, the curves of
again. Finally, the two weak signals are amplified by AMPs large size LEDs decline fast so that the performance degrades
(ZFL-1000+, Mini-Circuits) and captured by the oscilloscope at high frequency. As the frequency increases, the SNR curves
(OSC, 73304DX, Tektronix). tend to cross which implies that a large size LED does not
The two received digital signals are also processed in necessarily have a higher SNR at all. Particularly, the 75-μm
MATLAB. The high-frequency noise is first filtered by a one finally achieves the highest SNR value above 200 MHz,
digital low pass filter (LPF). After CP removal, the signals which indicates that the bandwidth becomes a major factor.
go through the fast Fourier transform (FFT) module and In a word, there are two main factors affecting the SNR as light
frequency-domain equalizer. Note that we need to calibrate power and bandwidth, respectively. The light power decides
the time cumulating phase error due to the clock deviation the peak SNR of the LED and bandwidth decides the SNR
between AWG and OSC. Then we combine the two signals descent rate versus frequency. Therefore, the large size LED
in each sub-channel respectively using MRC method, which can achieve higher modulation order but small size can use
is given by wider bandwidth for data transmission, which is a trade-off
and should be balanced.
Sn = cn,1 sn,1 + cn,2 sn,2 , (1) According to the measured SNRs, the bit and power alloca-
cn,1 Hn,2 = cn,2 Hn,1, (2) tion at each sub-channel can be applied to improve the band-
width efficiency meanwhile guaranteeing the BER lower than
where Sn is the combined signal, sn,1 and sn,2 are the equalized
the forward error correction (FEC) threshold, i.e., 3.8 × 10−3
signals in the n-th sub-channel from the two pixels, cn,1 and
in our case. By adjusting the bit allocation, we can obtain
cn,2 are the combining coefficients, and Hn,1 , Hn,2 are the
several groups of experimental results as shown in Fig. 6
counterpart channel gains. After combining, the data can be
and Table I. Fig. 7 shows the detailed results of the 75-μm
retracted from Sn with BER recorded.
micro-LED and presents the BER versus data rate of the
two pixels in the packaged 75-μm micro-LED without and
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION after combining, respectively. The data rate of the 75-μm
In this section, we present experimental results to demon- micro-LED can achieve 1.20 Gbps below the FEC threshold
strate the effectiveness of the proposed system. First, we have after combining and is about 1.00 Gbps or 1.08 Gbps for a
measured the SNRs of different size LEDs using EVM method single pixel transmission. We can see that the performance
with resulting curves shown in Fig. 5. We assume additive is enhanced obviously after combining since the diversity
white Gaussian noise (AWGN) for micro-LEDs, then the receiver not only collects more power but also reduces the
SNR can be defined as ρ = (R H Pt )2 /σ 2 where R is the noise influence. Moreover, the directions and positions of the

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ZHANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED VLC SYSTEM USING PAIRS OF MICRO-SIZE LEDs 1029

the non-monotonous effect gives a trade-off between modula-

tion depth and bandwidth. We compared various performances
of different size LEDs with parallel structure and found that
the largest and tiniest ones in our LED group, i.e., 175-μm
and 75-μm LEDs, have approximate and high data rates. It is
worth emphasizing that these two LEDs have similar data rate
not for the same reason. The 75-μm micro-LED relies on its
high bandwidth while 175-μm LED benefits from its high light
power and modulation depth. However, a large-scale micro-
LED array would overcome the light power weakness of a
small size pixel and achieve a much higher data rate expected
Fig. 6. Bit-error rate versus data rate of various LEDs.
to over 10 Gbps after further optimization [5]. If a higher data
TABLE I
rate is not the only pursuit, a relatively large size pixel will be
P ERFORMANCE C OMPARISON A MONG D IFFERENT S IZE LEDs
a good choice due to its better lighting effects and stability [6].
In the future, based on the results and analyses in this work,
we can further fabricate and package more pixels in one shell,
i.e., a large-scale micro-LED array, improving the performance
and making it still easy to integrate into other devices. Similar
design like spatial diversity can also be used to expand the
coverage and enhance the robustness.

IV. C ONCLUSION
In this letter, we presented a spatial diversity VLC sys-
tem in which different size LEDs with the same structure
were fabricated, packaged and installed. The experimental
results demonstrated the size-dependent effect and the trade-
off between modulation depth and bandwidth. The highest
data rate of 1.20 Gbps can be achieved by the 75-μm micro-
LED. The experiments also showed that spatial diversity is
suitable and able to enhance the performance, which provides
an alternative scheme for VLC system design.

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