Performance analysis and improvement of optical camera communication

Abstract

Optical camera communication (OCC) is a technology in which a camera image sensor is employed to receive data bits sent from a light source. OCC has attracted a lot of research interest in the area of mobile optical wireless communication due to the popularity of smartphones with embedded cameras. Moreover, OCC offers high-performance characteristics, including an excellent signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), high security, low interference, and high stability with respect to varying communication distances. Despite these advantages, OCC suffers from several limitations, the primary of which is the low data rate. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the parameters that influence the OCC performance. These parameters include the camera sampling rate, the exposure time, the focal length, the pixel edge length, the transmitter configurations, and the optical flickering rate. In particular, the focus is on enhancing the data rate, SINR, and communication distance, which are the principal factors determining the quality of service experienced by a user. The paper also provides a short survey of modulation schemes used in OCC on the basis of the achieved data rate, communication distance, and possible application scenarios. A theoretical analysis of user satisfaction using OCC is also rendered. Furthermore, we present the simulation results demonstrating OCC performance with respect to variations in the parameters mentioned above, which include the outage probability analysis for OCC.