RGB-LED-based Optical Camera Communication using Multilevel Variable Pulse Position Modulation for Healthcare Applications

In this paper, a 32-variable pulse position modulation (32-VPPM) scheme is proposed to support a red-green-blue light-emitting-diode (RGB-LED)-based optical camera communication (OCC) system. Our proposed modulation scheme is designed to enhance the OCC data transmission rate, which is targeted for the wearable biomedical data monitoring system. The OCC technology has been utilized as an alternative solution to the radio frequency (RF) wireless system for long-term self-healthcare monitoring. Different biomedical signals, such as electrocardiograms, photoplethysmograms, and respiration signals are being monitored and transmitted wirelessly from the wearable biomedical device to the smartphone receiver. A common 30 frames per second (fps) smartphone camera with a CMOS image sensor is used to record a transmitted optical signal. Moreover, the overall proposed system architecture, modulation scheme, and data demodulation are discussed in this paper. The experimental result shows that the proposed system is able to achieve > 9 kbps using only a common smartphone camera receiver.