Realtime Audio Streaming using Visible Light

Communication.
Mohit Sanjeevkumar Gujara, Prof. Shrikant Velankarb, Prof. Arun Chavanc
a,b,c
Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
a
mohitgujar93@gmail.com, bshrikant.velankar@vit.edu.in, carun.chavan@vit.edu.in

Abstract—With an increase in demand of high data rate near
field communication, Visible Light Communication (VLC) has
been recognized as advanced and most promising innovation to
acknowledge short-run, high speed as well as large capacity
wireless communication. In this paper, a prototype of real time
embedded system has been proposed, using modest financially
accessible light emitting diodes (LED), which can transmit audio
wirelessly. Experimental results shows high quality real time
audio can be transmitted and received at maximum range of 3
meters through appropriate format of LED sources and proper
concentration of LED light on receiver. VLC system has been
designed and implemented for high quality audio streaming.
shown in figure 1. The system will give video output to screen
and the audio will be transmitted at real time through VLC to
receiver. The audio to be transmitted is first digitized and then
transmitted over visible light in proper packet format and at
specific baud rate to establish synchronous simplex
communication between transmitter and receiver. Hence, work
has been done on physical layer, data-link layer and network
layer to digitize the audio data received form the source and
transmit it over visible light in proper packet format.

Keywords—Visible Light Communication; Real time audio

streaming;Embedded system.

I. INTRODUCTION

I n the past few years, different research has been focused

on energy saving techniques for illumination sources, since
current lamps provide very low power efficiency due to its
heating effect. Hence, more efficient lightning devices are
being developed to replace incandescent and fluorescent lights.
LED’s are the devices which make use of Solid State Lightning
(SSL) which converts electric energy into optical power more
efficiently. LED lighting has the following advantages over
incandescent and fluorescent lighting: low power consumption,
high energy efficiency, extremely long operational lifetime,
and ecological sustainability. Moreover, LED lamps can be
used as communication emitters without losing their
illumination functionality. By modulating high switching
characteristics of diode, digital data can be transferred
wirelessly through optical signal using the technique called as
Visible Light Communication (VLC).
Figure 1: System Scenario
The organization of rest of the paper is as follows: Section II
consists of system block diagram and Section III will contain
implementation details. Section IV consists of output result and
analysis, conclusion and future scope is present in section V
II. SYSTEM BLOCK DIAGRAM
In order to transmit digital data over a synchronous link,
the transmitter and receiver will contain following
components: amplifier, analog to digital converter, digital to
analog converter, a microcontroller, and a VLC module. The
block diagram of the system is as shown in figure 2.

The aim of this paper is to implement a prototype real time
embedded system which will use LED as a light source as well
as add communication capabilities to it. The transmitted data
will be digitized and then will be given to LED, turning led ON
for ones and OFF for zeros. The transmission data rate has to
be so high that it eliminates the flicker and perceive as a
constant light source to human eye. The system scenario is as
A. Transmitter block
Analog signal coming from the source will be first
amplified and then digitized using analog to digital converter.
The raw bit stream of digital data will then be packetized
using microcontroller and then will be given to VLC module
serially. This serial binary data will modulate the amplitude of
an LED (switching it ON for one and OFF for zero).
 Figure 2: System Block Diagram
B. Receiver Block
The VLC receiver will contain a photo detector which will
generate voltage across it when light falls on it. Thus the photo
detector will detect the transmitted data packets. This detected
data will be given to an amplifier which will amplify the
detected signal and give it to microcontroller. The
microcontroller will extract the data from the received packets
and this digital data will be converted to analog using digital to
analog converter. The analog signal (i.e. audio) will be
amplified and then given to a speaker.
III. IMPLEMENTATON DETAILS
The implementation work can be divided as per the work
done at three different layers, i.e. physical layer, data link layer,
network layer.
A. Physical Layer
A communication channel has been first established at
physical layer to verify whether communication is possible
using visible light communication. Signal is given to the base
of transistor and the LED is connected at the collector of an
NPN transistor. The circuit of transmitter and receiver is as
shown in figure 3.
Figure 3: Physical Layer
At the receiver side, the photo detector generates a voltage
across it depending on the incident light intensity. This
generated voltage variation is very low in amplitude and hence
its output is given to an amplifier. In the circuit shown in
figure, three op-amps are used; first op-amp acts as a
comparator, second is a buffer and the third is used to amplify
and get proper TTL voltage level. This output of op-amp is
given to serial receiver pin of microcontroller. Microcontroller
then extracts the data from the received packets and gives it to
DAC. The configuration of ATMEGA 328 is as shown in
figure 4.
Figure 4: Microcontroller Interface
B. DataLink Layer
This layer is one of the most complicated layers and has
complex functionalities and liabilities. Data link layer hides the
details of underlying hardware and represents itself to upper
layer as the medium to communicate. Functions of data link
layer are: framing, addressing, synchronization, error control,
flow control, etc. The structure implemented is as shown in
figure 5.
Figure 5: Data Link Layer Packet Format [4]
The header contains details such as start of frame and
addressing; the trailer contains details such as error detection
and frame stop bits.
C. Network layer
Network layer takes the responsibility for routing packets
from source to destination within or outside a subnet. Two
different subnet may have different addressing schemes or non-
compatible addressing types. Same with protocols, two
different subnet may be operating on different protocols which
are not compatible with each other. Network layer has the
responsibility to route the packets from source to destination,
mapping different addressing schemes and protocols.
 Internet protocol is widely used network layer protocol
which helps to communicate end to end devices over the
internet. TCP/IP is reliable and byte stream oriented. It receives
acknowledgement of every packet sent. This feature is not
helpful in our application, as we are streaming audio we do not
need acknowledgement. Using TCP/IP will increase the
overhead and thus reduce the data transmission rate. Instead, in
our application we will use UDP protocol as UDP is
connection less and Datagram oriented, it has low overhead
and best suited for streaming applications.
The header of UDP is as shown in figure 6:
Figure 6: UPD header [5]
D. Compleate Setup
Figure 7: Complete Hardware Setup
The complete hardware setup is as shown in figure 7. The
audio input is taken from mobile phone’s 3.5mm jack. That
audio is amplified and digitized and given to controller. The
controller sends the data through different packets as
discussed earlier. The packets are sent to VLC module via
serial port of the controller. The receiver module extracts the
audio data and gives it to the speaker.
IV. RESULT AND ANALYSIS
The transmitted signal from the serial port of the controller
and the received signal after processing which is given to
microcontroller at the receiver are shown in the figure 8. The
waveform at channel 1 (Shown in orange color) is the
transmitted signal and the waveform at channel 2 (shown in
blue color) is the received waveform by the controller.
It can be seen that the transmitted binary data by controller
and received binary data exactly matches with each other.
Hence audio communication using Visible Light
Communication is possible
. Figure 8: Transmitter and Receiver Waveforms
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
In this paper, a real time audio broadcast prototype using
simple LED is proposed. System design details are illustrated
in detail and experimental results are presented. It can be
concluded that transmission of audio at a distance of 3 meter is
possible. Hence, for near field communication applications,
VLC can prove a better replacement for Wi-Fi or other radio
wave communication.
Future work can be concentrated to improve range and
speed of VLC. The improvements in range can be achieved by
adding focusing lenses between transmitter and receiver. The
speed can further be improved by implementing parallel data
transmission using matrix of arrays, with each in the array of
different color, and tuning different photo detectors at the
receiver at different wavelengths thus implementing
wavelength division multiplexing.
REFERENCES
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Illumination cum Communication”, 2013 International Conference on
Communication Systems and Network Technologies, DOI
10.1109/CSNT.2013.189.
[2] Yingjie He, Liwei Ding, Yuxian Gong, Yongjin Wang, “ Real-time
Audio & Video Transmission System Based on Visible Light
Communication”, Optics and Photonics Journal, 2013, 3, 153-157
[3] F. Delgado, I. Quintana, J. Rufo, J.A. Rabadan, Crisanto Quintana, and R.
Perez-Jimenez, “Design and Implementation of an Ethernet-VLC
Interface for Broadcast Transmissions”, IEEE COMMUNICATIONS
LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2010
[4] http://computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/Notes/Networks/data.link.html.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol.