Mobile-phone based visible light communication using region-grow light source tracking for unstable light source

In order to increase the data rate of the camera-based visible light communication (VLC) system, using rolling shutter effect has been demonstrated successfully, in which the pixel rows of the complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor are activated sequentially. Previous camera-based VLCs focused on using a stable LED light source, and its illumination area is positioned at the center of an image frame. In this work, we investigate the performance of a camera-based VLC with light source at different parts of an image frame. We propose and demonstrate using region-grow algorithm to track the light source. We also evaluate and discuss different scenarios when the light source is moved. Besides, a recorded > 5 kbit/s net data rate can be achieved by using only a single phosphor-based white-light LED source. Here, we demonstrate that 4.502 pixel/bit can be achieved.