LED transceivers with beehive-shaped reflector for visible light communication

This paper proposes a novel beehive-shaped reflector for application to light-emitting diode (LED) transceivers for illumination and bi-directional visible light communication (VLC). By using a diffuse propagation model extended to line-of-sight and direct signals, the distribution of illuminance and the path loss of the transceiver are investigated to evaluate the performance of the beehive-shaped reflector. To verify bi-directional communication, a VLC-based image capture system, comprising a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor and video processor unit, is demonstrated. Real-time images captured by the CMOS camera are successfully transmitted to the monitoring system via a free-space channel at a rate of 115.2 kbps.