The first tests of smartphone camera exposure effect on optical camera communication links

In this paper, we study the effect of smartphone camera exposure on the performance of optical camera communications (OCC) link. The exposure parameters of image sensor sensitivity (ISO), aperture and shutter speed are included. A static OCC link with a 8×8 red, green and blue (RGB) LED array employed as the transmitter and a smartphone camera as the receiver is demonstrated to verify the study. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) analysis at different ISO values, the effect of aperture and shutter speed on communication link quality is performed. While SNRs of 20.6 dB and 16.9 dB are measured at 1 m and 2 m transmission distance, respectively for a ISO value of 100, they are decreased to 17.4 dB and 13.32 dB for a ISO of 800. The bit error rate (BER) of a 1 m long OCC link with a camera’s shutter speed of 1/6000 s is 1.3×10−3 (i.e., below the forward error correction BER limit of 3.8×10−3) and is dropped to 0.0125 at a shutter speed of 1/20 s. This study provides insight of the basic smartphone settings and the exposure adjustment for further complex OCC links.