An investigation of the solar irradiance effect on visible light communications

Abstract

This work aims to debunk the myth that visible light communication (VLC) systems cannot work under the presence of sunlight. It provides an investigation of an outdoor VLC system model in the presence of solar irradiance. Worst-case scenarios are considered in terms of location, link orientation and choice of photodiode. The effect of solar irradiance is investigated in terms of data rate and bit error rate (BER) degradation. An optical bandpass blue filter is shown to compensate for 53% of the reduced data rate in the presence of sunlight. Reliable communications above 1 Gb/s can be achieved using simple optical filtering under the effect of solar irradiance.<br/