High-capacity MIMO visible light communication integrated into mini-LED LCDs

Visible light communication (VLC) can be integrated into a liquid crystal display (LCD) by modulating its backlight while normally showing pictures. Received by ordinary cameras, such integrated display and communication (IDAC) systems are promising for the Internet of Things and Metaverse. However, in the premise of unaffected display function, the capacity of current IDAC systems is limited, with data rates of very few kbps. This work proposes a new architecture: multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) VLC integrated into a mini-LED LCD, whose many backlight segments act as multiple transmitters. A camera utilizes the rolling shutter effect with independent pixel columns to form multiple outputs. The communication capacity is thus significantly multiplied by the backlight column number. In addition, local dimming, which is favorable for an LCD’s contrast and power consumption, is exploited to achieve efficient signal modulation. We built a mini-LED LCD prototype with 8-by-20 backlight segments for experimental verification. The backlight segments multiplex a video-rate signal for local dimming and a high-frequency (∼34 kHz) signal modulated through multi-pulse position modulation (MPPM) for VLC. By taking photographs with a camera 1.1 m away from the screen, a record-high rate of 201.6 kbps (approximately ten times faster than current IDAC systems) was experimentally achieved with a bit error rate satisfying the forward error correction. Improved image contrast due to local dimming was also observed.