Enabling Body-Centric Computing Applications with LED-to-Camera Communication

Advances in Visible Light Communication are enabling novel Internet of Things applications. Going forward, we expect that LED-to-Camera links will enable a wide range of body-centric computing applications. Up until now, most LED-to-Camera studies have been following a deploy-and-test approach instead of a principled methodology. This ad-hoc design raises up two problems. First, we cannot compare fairly the various methods proposed in the literature because they use different types of LEDs and cameras. Second, and perhaps more importantly, we cannot identify the fundamental opportunities and limits of these novel links. To overcome these challenges, we propose a simple analytical model that estimates the range and data rate of LED-to-camera links prior to deployment. The model is built from first principles and requires only a limited set of parameters. To validate the accuracy of our model, we consider the two main transmission modes used in the literature: binary transmission and communication based on the rolling shutter effect. Our experimental evaluation confirms the predictions of the analytical model.