Styrofoam: A tightly packed coding scheme for camera-based visible light communication

Robert LiKamWa, David Ramirez, Jason Holloway

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

Screen-to-camera visible-light communication links are fundamentally limited by inter-symbol interference, in which the camera receives multiple overlapping symbols in a single capture exposure. By determining interference constraints, we are able to decode symbols with multi-bit depth across all three color channels. We present Styrofoam, a coding scheme which optimally satisfies the constraints by inserting blank frames into the transmission pattern. The coding scheme improves upon the state-of-the-art in camera-based visible-light communication by: (1) ensuring a decode with at least half-exposure of colored multi-bit symbols, (2) limiting decode latency to two transmission frames, and (3) transmitting 0.4 bytes per grid block at the slowest camera's frame rate. In doing so, we outperform peer unsynchronized VLC transmission schemes by 2:9x. Our implementation on smart-phone displays and cameras achieves 69:1 kbps.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationVLCS 2014 - Proceedings of the 1st ACM MobiCom Workshop on Visible Light Communication Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages27-32
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450330671
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event1st ACM MobiCom Workshop on Visible Light Communication Systems, VLCS 2014 - Maui, United States
Duration: Sep 7 2014Sep 7 2014

Publication series

NameVLCS 2014 - Proceedings of the 1st ACM MobiCom Workshop on Visible Light Communication Systems

Conference

Conference1st ACM MobiCom Workshop on Visible Light Communication Systems, VLCS 2014
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMaui
Period9/7/149/7/14

Keywords

  • Mobile systems
  • Visible light communication

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Software
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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