Zero energy visible light communication receiver for embedded applications

Internet of Things is bringing multiple domains and multiple avenues to connect anything and everything. It mainly uses RF connectivity. However, recently visible light communication (VLC) is also being explored. VLC has the properties that are unique with respect to the privacy and security that it provides. Though the transmission is of broadcast in nature the receiver needs to be in the vicinity of the transmitter, thus providing secure communications. Further, when low power receivers need to be constructed, it is important to harness energy from transmission itself. In this article we propose a novel design for a receiver to be used in VLC for embedded systems. The setup works, using a small solar panel (2mm x 2mm) as a medium to simultaneously harvest incident light energy and receive data bit streams. The LED source was modulated using On-Off Keying. The receiver works for close range communications. The results in this paper show experimental evaluation of the system. We could detect the signals from the source using harvested energy from the same transmission.