A Flexible OLED based VLC Link with m-CAP Modulation

In recent years there has been a growing interest in using organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) for illumination in indoor environments. They offer attractive features such as flexibility and large active areas at a low cost; they are energy efficient and have higher illumination levels compared to silicone based LEDs. In addition, the utilization of OLEDs have increased in devices such as smart mobile phones and TVs because of their low thickness. This paper investigates the performance of an OLED based visible light communications (OVLC) system, using a curved and flat OLED with multiband carrierless amplitude and phase (m-CAP) modulation for m = 2 at different angles of incidence on the optical receiver. It is shown that the BER performance is improved (i.e., below the forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3.8×10−3) with the curved OLED when the optical receiver moving along a circular path for the viewing angles greater 40° compared to the flat OLED, which is advantageous in device to device communications.