Assessment of the Influence of Photodiode Size on RSS-Based Visible Light Positioning Precision

Abstract

This work discusses the influence of a photodiodes effective area size on the precision of received signal strength-based visible light positioning. It analyzes how two silicon-based photodiodes with different effective area perform as a receiver under varying illumination conditions. The two main findings are that it is not particularly needed to select a photodiode with a large surface area, despite the higher received signal strength, due to a higher noise contribution. On the other hand, the spread on the distance estimation is much smaller than 1 mm under standard illumination levels for the two photodiodes with a significantly different surface area, so that both photodiodes deliver enough precision.