Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation

IEEE-ICASI 2017 - Meen, Prior & Lam (Eds)

Design and implementation of anti low-frequency noise in visible light communications

1
Fu-Liang Chang, *Wei-Wen Hu, 2Da-Huei Lee, and 3Chao-Tang Yu

Department of Electronic Engineering,

Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C.
4A236043@stust.edu.tw; *huweiwen@stust.edu.tw.; 2dhlee@stust.edu.tw.; 3ctyu@stust.edu.tw

Abstract the presence of low frequency noise.

With the increasing popularity of light emitting diodes (LEDs),
visible light communication (VLC) systems provide an
attractive alternative method for wireless communication. To
reduce complexity and achieve lower cost, the on-off keying
(OOK) modulation has been widely adopted in
implementation of VLC systems. Although the conventional
minimum-voltage detection circuit can remove the
interference from sunlight or ambient light, the low frequency
noise problem is still unsolved. To overcome this drawback,
we propose a novel OOK-based VLC receiver architecture
consisting of a transimpedance amplifier, a fourth order high
pass filter with Sallen-Key method, and a Schmitt trigger.
Experiment results show that the proposed receiver not only
can remove the interference from ambient lights, but also can
reduce the interference effects from the low-frequency noise of
ambient light or indoor fluorescent light.
Key words: visible light communication (VLC), on-off
keying (OOK), high-pass filter, anti low-frequency noise.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the conventional OOK-based VLC receiver. Section
III derives the design and implementation of circuit with anti
low-frequency noise in visible light communications.
Simulation results and experiment results were provided in
Section IV. The paper concludes with Section V.
The conventional OOK-based VLC receiver
In [6], Zhao et al proposed an OOK-based VLC receiver
composed by a transimpedance amplifier (TIA), an adaptive
minimum-voltage detector (AMD), a differential amplifier
(DA), and a voltage amplifier (AMP) as shown in Fig. 1. As
we know, the TIA converts the received optical signals to
electrical signals. AMD is used to track the minimum value of
the converted electrical signals and then the minimum voltage
is removed by the DA circuit. Finally, the resultant signal is
amplified by use of the AMP circuit to obtain an appropriate
voltage.

Introduction
Recently, visible light communication (VLC) is identified as
an attractive alternative method for wireless communications
because it has several advantages such as higher data rates,
license-free spectrum, and indoor localization capability [1].
Basically, the transmitters of VLC are light emitting diodes Fig. 1. The conventional OOK-based VLC receiver.
(LEDs) while the principal device of the VLC receiver is a
photodiode. In VLC systems, the transmitted signals must be
unipolar because intensity modulation and direct detection
(IM/DD) is the major method to modulate the light intensity.
Two well-known techniques, namely, DC-biased optical
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM)
and asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM)
have been proposed to make VLC signals unipolar [2]-[5]. Fig. 2. The proposed OOK-based VLC receiver.
However, OFDM is prone to the high peak-to-average power
ratio, resulting in LED nonlinear effect. The on-off keying
(OOK) modulation has been widely adopted for The proposed OOK-based VLC receiver
implementation in VLC systems due to its advantages of lower
complexity and lower cost [6]-[7]. A. The block diagram of OOK-based VLC receiver
In this paper, we propose a novel OOK-based VLC receiver The block diagram of a front-end processing circuit for
architecture consisting of a transimpedance amplifier, a fourth OOK-based VLC receiver with the ability of removing the low
order high pass filter with Sallen-Key method, and a Schmitt frequency noise is shown in Fig. 2. It comprises a photodiode,
trigger. Compared to conventional OOK-based VLC receiver transimpdance amplifier, high pass filter and Schmitt trigger.
architecture, the proposed architecture has the advantage of Figure 3 shows the schematics of the each module and the
low-cost and robustness to low frequency noise. The corresponding values of components. After passing through a
transimpedance amplifier converts the optical signals to photodiode, the obtained electrical signals are fed into the
electrical signals by a photodiode. The high pass filter is used transimpdance amplifier, which comprises a capacitor (C101)
to remove low-frequency noise below 200 Hz and the Schmitt in parallel with a resistor (R103). A 5 pF capacitor helps
trigger transforms the filtered signal into digital signals. It can removing the noise at the photodiode output, while there was a
be seen that experimental results better fit simulation results in

1536 - ISBN 978-1-5090-4897-7

 Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation
IEEE-ICASI 2017 - Meen, Prior & Lam (Eds)

slight rise time caused by setting RC time constant as
 RC  220k    5 p  1.1us
Obviously, if the transmitter data rate achieves higher than 1
MHz, the receiver would not be able to keep up with the
transmitted data. As we know, the frequency ranges of noise
from the ambient light or indoor fluorescent light are 60 Hz
-150 Hz. To remove the low-frequency noise, we adopt a
fourth order Sallen-Key high pass filter with 12 dB gain, which
comprises of two high pass filters in cascade. The frequency
response is given in Fig.4. Finally, the filtered signals input to
the Schmitt trigger to recovery the signal.
performed under the indoor case in the presence of fluorescent
lights. The VLC transmitter is LED with power of 0.1W and
maximum current of 46 mA. The distance between LED and
photodiode is 10 cm in the first experiment. From Fig.6, it can
be seen that experiment results are consistent to that of
simulations. Figure 7 shows the experiment results when the
receiver circuit is placed near the window and the
corresponding distance away from LED is 1 m. It can be seen
that the peak-to-peak voltage of the TIA becomes smaller due
to the lengthening of the distance, and the signal amplitude
offset is greater. However, the destroyed signal is still
recovered by the proposed receiver.

Fig. 5.Indoor simulated output signals from the proposed VLC

receiver.

Fig. 3. Schematics of the proposed receiver.

Fig. 6. Indoor experiment output signals from the proposed

VLC receiver (10cm away from LED).

Fig. 4. Frequency response of the designed HPF.

Simulations and implementation

Figure 5 shows the indoor output signals from the

proposed VLC receiver by use of LTspice simulation tool.
The data sequences with a bit rate of 10 K are generated and
OOK modulation and Manchester encoding are used in our
simulations. The noise below 200 Hz is also added to evaluate Fig. 7. Indoor experiment output signals from the proposed
the ability of removing noise while carrying out simulations. It
can be seen that TIA output signal is shifted upward because of VLC receiver (1m away from LED).
noise addition. However, the signals are recovered after
passing through Schmitt trigger. Subsequently, the proposed
VLC receiver has been implemented and experiments are

ISBN 978-1-5090-4897-7 - 1537

Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation
IEEE-ICASI 2017 - Meen, Prior & Lam (Eds)
Conclusion
In this paper, we have proposed and implemented a novel
OOK-based VLC receiver architecture consisting of a
transimpedance amplifier, a fourth order high pass filter with
Sallen-Key method, and a Schmitt trigger. Experiments results
show that the implemented receiver not only removes the
interference from ambient lights, but reduces the interference
effects caused by the low-frequency noise of ambient light or
indoor fluorescent light.
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and
Technology, R.O.C, under Grants MOST
105-2221-E-218-010 and MOST 105-2632-E-218-002.
1538 - ISBN 978-1-5090-4897-7
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