High-Speed GaN-Based Superluminescent Diode for 4.57 Gbps Visible Light Communication

Abstract

Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology for next-generation high-speed optical wireless data links. Among various transmitters, GaN-based superluminescent diodes (SLDs) show interesting characteristics, including a large modulation bandwidth, droop free and low speckle noise, which makes them attractive for VLC applications. In this work, we design and fabricate a blue-emitting SLD utilizing tilted facet configuration. Using SLD as the light source, a VLC system is experimentally demonstrated. A record data rate of 4.57 gigabit per second (Gbps) is achieved with adaptive bit-loading discrete multiple tone (DMT) modulation, while the highest modulation format reaches 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). The corresponding bit error rate (BER) is ~3.5 × 10−3, which is below the forward error correction (FEC) threshold of 3.8 × 10−3 .