2 Gbps free-space ultraviolet-C communication based on a high-bandwidth micro-LED achieved with pre-equalization

In this Letter, we experimentally achieve high-speed ultraviolet-C (UVC) communication based on a 276.8 nm UVC micro-LED. A record ${-}{{3}}\;{\rm{dB}}$ optical bandwidth of 452.53 MHz and light output power of 0.854 mW at a current density of ${{400}}\;{\rm{A/c}}{{\rm{m}}^2}$ are obtained with a chip size of 100 µm. A UVC link over 0.5 m with a data rate of 2 Gbps is achieved using 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and pre-equalization, and an extended distance over 3 m with a data rate of 0.82 Gbps is also presented. The demonstrated high-speed performance shows that micro-LEDs have great potential in the field of UVC communication.