Visible Light Communicatios Consortium：What's VLC

What is Visible Light Communication ?

Visible Light Communication is the most advanced communication technology using "Visible Light"; the visible light everywhere around our daily life. We are heavily relying on our eyes to gather almost all information for our day-to-day activities. "Visibility" is one of the most important things for human being, and many devices are developed to assist our "Visibility". For instance, there are many devices including the lightings in our offices, home, the lightings on roads, traffic signals, commercial displays, small lamps on electronic home appliances including TVs, etc. Recently, LED (Light Emitting Diode) has been used for those devices. LED has a special characteristic to light on and off very fast. The data can be transmitted by lighting LED on and off at ultra high speed. And, the digital camera and the camera on cell phones, which are popular now, are very excellent system to receive the visible light. By using the visible light for the data transmission, many problems related to radio and infrared communications are solved. The visible light communication has characteristics to be ubiquitous, transmitted at ultra high speed and harmless for human body and electronic devices, compared to those by radio and infrared communications.

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There are various advantages to use the visible light communication as follows;
- Visible light is very safe for human. And, the data can be transmitted by the visible 　
　light communication even through a high voltage of home/office lighting.
- The lightings are set everywhere. Then, the data wireless transmission system can
　be easily established through the visible light communication device attached to the
　lightings.

On the other hand, the radio wireless communications have the following several problems although they are widely in use of cell phones and wireless LAN.
- The electric transmission power cannot be increased because of the bad effect to
　human body.
- Due to the radio wave restriction, there is no room to use more radio frequency.
- The radio wave cannot be used in hospitals and space stations due to the bad effect
　to their precision instruments/devices.

These radio wave problems above are easily solved by use of the visible light communications.

The objectives of Visible Light Communications Consortium is to research, develop, plan, standardize the communication system which is a high speed and human safe ubiquitous system using LED through the home/office lightings, traffic signals, electronic advertising board, small lamps on home appliances, etc. The visible light communication is transmitted by its intensity modulation.