15 November 2013

Fraunhofer HHI enables visible light communication by LED at 3Gb/s

The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI of Berlin, Germany (a research center for communication systems, digital media and services) claims to have set a further milestone in visible light communication on the way to high-speed Internet from the ceiling lamp. The development of novel components for data transmission by LEDs means that significantly higher bandwidth can now be used in real-time, with data throughput rates of up to 3Gb/s. The new components are being presented at ITU Telecom World 2013 (The Lab, booth D09.02) in Bangkok, Thailand (19–22 November).

The technology developed by HHI makes it possible to use standard off-the-shelf LED room lights for data transmission. Data rates of up to 800Mb/s have been reached using this optical WLAN under laboratory conditions, while a complete real-time system exhibited at trade fairs reached data throughput of 500Mb/s. The newly developed patent-protected components have now achieved a transmission rate of over 1Gb/s per single light frequency. As off-the-shelf LEDs mainly use three light colors, speeds of up to 3Gb/s are feasible, says HHI.

Up to now, LEDs could only be used with a bandwidth of around 30MHz, yet the new components enable a much higher bandwidth of up to 180MHz to be exploited. As the higher frequency bands are also used for transmission, this significantly boosts the data throughput rate.

Development of the components as modules makes them suitable for customized integration in technology developments such as Car-to-X communication. However, visible light communication also has a broad array of other possible applications, ranging from areas like aeroplanes (where safety is at a premium) to places like trade shows and factory halls (where radio communication is problematic). HHI reckons that this new development represents a major step towards optical high-speed wireless local-area networks (WLANs).

Tags: HHI

Visit: www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/vlc

Visit: http://world2013.itu.int