Visible Light Communication & Sensing

Nowadays, half of the world's population (plus billions of things) connect to the Internet using mainly wireless technologies. Our ever-increasing demand for wireless communication is crowding the radio frequency spectrum: we need more bandwidth. To overcome this challenge, a new generation of devices has started to use the visible light spectrum to transmit data. This new paradigm is promising because the visible light spectrum is empty and free.

In this course, you will be introduced to the general field of visible light communication and sensing (VLCS). You will learn about its history, current developments, and future opportunities. The course will cover theory and practice. First, you will learn the main modulation techniques used to transmit data with light, and then, you will use that knowledge to create your own VLCS system. The course will also cover the latest research done on this topic at various universities around the world.

A wonderful introduction about the potential of Visible Light Communication is given in this TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/harald_haas_wireless_data_from_every_light_bulb?language=en#t-4148

This course includes 8 lectures, two lab projects, and one final main project. There are two lectures per week during the first four weeks. After that, there will be only lab sessions to monitor the progress of the main project. The 8 lectures are:

Lecture 1: Introduction & Hardware
Lecture 2: Physical Layer: Pulse-Based Modulation
Lecture 3: Physical Layer: Advanced Modulation
Lecture 4: Network Layer
Lecture 5: Camera-based communication
Lecture 6: Backscattering Communication
Lecture 7: Sensing Applications
Lecture 8: SoA, Standardization & Commercialization