International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 160

Volume 4 Issue 5, May 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

Li-Fi Technology based Data Transciever System

C. Navin Kumar*, Abhinav Singh**, B. Premalatha***
*,** Third Year B.E Students, Department of ECE, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore-14.
***Assistant Professor, Department of ECE, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore-14.

ABSTRACT
At present, enormous new technologies are participating
to satisfy the growing demands of wireless
communication environment for an end user. A new
technology proposed by the German physicist-Harald
Haas,
named
Li-Fi
(Light-Fidelity)
provides
transmission of data through illumination. Data can be
sent through an LED bulb in which the intensity gets
varied faster than the human eye could follow and at the
same time illuminating the room. As the number of users
increases everyday there is a need for an alternative
which does not depend on the current technology.
Visible light communication can be the solution. It
provides high security communication where the digital
data in the transmitter is encoded before being
transmitted by the LED. Microcontroller was used in
transmitter as well as in the receiver. The encoded digital
data is transmitted through LED bulbs using a
microcontroller and it is received by a photodiode where
it is decoded by another microcontroller.
Keywords LED, Li-Fi, Visible Light Communication

I.

where the distance of transmission depends on the

intensity of the LED bulb used. Greater the power of
LED bulb, more will be the transmitted distance.

II.

PROPOSED SYSTEM

The entire project is covered in the block diagram as

shown in fig.1. In the transmitter section input data is
converted to digital form by an ADC in case of analog
input and for digital input ADC is not required. The
digital data is then given to the microcontroller where
encoding is done. The encoded data is sent to the LED
bulb through a driver circuit which is powered
separately. Intensity modulation is done in which light
OFF denotes logic 0 and light ON denotes logic 1. In
the receiver section, a photo detector receives the
encoded data sequence and it is decoded using another
microcontroller. In order to differentiate between 0s and
1s a threshold level is set in the controller. This level is
based on the intensity of the LED bulb used and the
ambient light falling on the photo diode. This setting
decreases the probability of wrong decision by the
receiver.

INTRODUCTION

Li-Fi technology has been proposed to transmit digital

data through LED bulbs by varying its intensity very
faster which is too quick to be noticed by the human eye.
Amplitude modulation is done in which the LED bulbs
are switched ON and OFF million times per second
where light ON denotes logic 1 and light OFF
denotes logic 0. Li-Fi is an emerging branch of
wireless optical communication which can provide high
data transmission rate depending on the switching
characteristics of LEDs. Nowadays LED bulbs are used
everywhere for lighting purpose and data transmission
through the same makes it more advantageous.
Also RF waves produced by devices causes
Interference. i.e. Affects the operation of nearby
devices. For example, in Hospitals Wi-Fi is not used
because of the above reason. But visible light doesnt
have this effect. Also LEDs are made from Non-toxic
substances and has no effects on living tissues unlike
Wi-Fi. So it does not possess any biological threat. The
objective is to transmit any digital data to a particular
distance through visible light and at the same time
illuminate the room. In this project text messages were
transmitted through LED bulb to a particular distance

Fig.1 Block diagram of proposed system

Now by using DAC (only if ADC was used in
transmitter) analog output is obtained and thus original
data is retrieved.

III.

ENCODING METHOD

When a digital data sequence is transmitted there is a

possibility that the LED may flicker which could be
detected by the naked eye. This is not appreciable
because the objective is to brighten the room and at the
same time transmit the data. So encoding has to be done
to eliminate the flickering problem. The only alternate to
this problem is to encode the bit streams with maximum

www.ijaert.org

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 161

Volume 4 Issue 5, May 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

number of 1s possible (i.e. Reduce the number of zeros

to be transmitted) and at the receiver decode them to get
the original data back.

IV.

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

to transmit and receive square wave (simple digital data)

and not on the distance of transmission. Square wave
was produced using microcontroller and the output was
given to the LED .The light signal captured by the photo
diode was displayed in a CRO after amplification.

4.1 ADC
The analog signal is converted to digital signal using
analog to digital convertor (ADC). The Microchip
Technology Inc. MCP3002 is a successive
approximation 10-bit Analog-to-Digital (A/D) Converter
used in this project. ADC is used only when the input
signal is analog and it is optional.
4.2 DAC
The digital data is converted back to analog signal at the
receiver using Digital to Analog convertor (DAC). The
MCP4716 are single channel 10-bit buffered voltage
output Digital-to Analog Converters (DAC) with
nonvolatile memory and an I2C serial interface is used
here. This is also optional.
4.3 Microcontroller
Encoding of digital data is done through a
microcontroller and it is transmitted through an LED
bulb. This is done to eliminate the flickering problem. In
the receiver side the data is decoded by another
controller. ATmega328P is an 8-bit microcontroller from
ATMEL and is used in this project.

Fig.2 Stage 1- Block diagram

Fig.3 Square wave transmission

4.4 LED
High power DC LED bulb which is enough to brighten a
small room is used for data transmission too. Encoded
data stream is transmitted serially to the LED from the
controller.
4.5 LED Driver
The output power from the controller is not sufficient to
drive the high power LED so driver circuit must be used.
L293D driver is used to serve for this purpose in this
project. Separate power supply is provided to the driver
to drive the LED.

Fig.4 amplification and buffer circuit

4.6 Photo detector

To convert light signals to electrical signal photo diode
is used. BPW34S is a PIN photodiode with high speed
and high radiant sensitivity which is sensitive to visible
and near infrared radiation is used in this project.

V.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
5.1 Stage-1 Proof of Concept (PoC)
The objective is to transmit digital data through LED. So
the initial step is to check whether data can be sent
through an LED or not. Therefore the primary focus was
www.ijaert.org

Fig.5 CRO output

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 162

Volume 4 Issue 5, May 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

5.2 Stage-2 Stepping into Li-Fi

In stage-2 two major changes were included in the
system:
Small sized LED was replaced by a high power LED
bulb and LED driver circuit was used to give necessary
power to the bulb. This was done to increase the distance
of transmission and also for brightening the room. Fig.6
and Fig.7 explains the experimental setup and its
description.
Fig.9 Data transmission

Fig.6 Stage 2- Block diagram

In this stage the only focus was on increasing the
distance of transmission while the data was still the same
square wave. Thus the actual concept of Li-Fi was
demonstrated in this stage.

Fig.10 Data at the transmitter side

Fig.7 Stage-2 Setup

Fig.11 Output at the Receiver Side

5.3 Stage-3 Transmitting text messages

The final stage of this project is to transmit TEXT
messages from one system to another.

Fig.8 Stage-3 Setup

VI.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Thus the digital data was transmitted using LED bulb in

an efficient manner without much complication. The
desired output was obtained. Lighting the room and
simultaneous transmission of text messages were done
successfully. The distance of transmission depends on
the intensity of the bulb used. This work can be
extended even better by applying the same concept in
smart phones. By developing an android application to
control the LED flash light used for camera,
transmission of any files to the neighboring devices can
be achieved. The same hardware for flashing purpose
can also be used for data transmission at a very high rate.

www.ijaert.org

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 163

Volume 4 Issue 5, May 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

REFERENCES
Journal Papers:
[1] Jyoti Rani, PrernaChauhan, RitikaTripathi, Li-Fi
(Light Fidelity)-The future technology In Wireless
communication, International Journal of Applied
Engineering Research, ISSN 0973-4562 Vol.7 No.11
(2012).
[2]
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/28/tech/lifi-haasinnovation
[3] H. Haas, Wireless Data from Every Light Bulb,
TED Website, Aug. 2011. [Online]. Available:
http://bit.ly/tedvlc
[4] H. Haas and C. Chen, What is LiFi? in 41st
European Conference on Optical Communiation
(ECOC), Valencia (Spain), 27 September 1 October
2015.
[5] M. Mossaad, S. Hranilovic, and L. Lampe, Visible
Light Communications Using OFDM and Multiple
LEDs, IEEE Transactions on Communications,, vol.
PP, no. 99, pp. 11, 2015.
[6] A. Jalajakumari, K. Cameron, R. Henderson, D.
Tsonev, and H. Haas, An Energy Efficient High-speed
Digital LED Driver for Visible Light Communications,
in 2015 IEEE International Conference on
Communications (ICC), June 2015, pp. 50545059.
[7] L. Yin, X. Wu, and H. Haas, On the Performance of
Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access in Visible Light
Communication, in Proc. IEEE 26th Annual
Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio
Communications (PIMRC), Hong Kong, China, Sept.
2015, pp. 13761381.
[8] I. Stefan, H. Burchardt, and H. Haas, Area Spectral
Efficiency Performance Comparison between VLC and
RF Femtocell Networks, inProc. IEEE Int. Conf.
Commun. (ICC), Budapest, Hungary, Jun. 913 2013,
pp. 15.

www.ijaert.org