Design and Implementation of a Novel Compatible Encoding Scheme in the Time Domain for Image Sensor Communication

This paper presents a modulation scheme in the time domain based on On-Off-Keying and proposes various compatible supports for different types of image sensors. The content of this article is a sub-proposal to the IEEE 802.15.7r1 Task Group (TG7r1) aimed at Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) using an image sensor as the receiver. The compatibility support is indispensable for Image Sensor Communications (ISC) because the rolling shutter image sensors currently available have different frame rates, shutter speeds, sampling rates, and resolutions. However, focusing on unidirectional communications (i.e., data broadcasting, beacons), an asynchronous communication prototype is also discussed in the paper. Due to the physical limitations associated with typical image sensors (including low and varying frame rates, long exposures, and low shutter speeds), the link speed performance is critically considered. Based on the practical measurement of camera response to modulated light, an operating frequency range is suggested along with the similar system architecture, decoding procedure, and algorithms. A significant feature of our novel data frame structure is that it can support both typical frame rate cameras (in the oversampling mode) as well as very low frame rate cameras (in the error detection mode for a camera whose frame rate is lower than the transmission packet rate). A high frame rate camera, i.e., no less than 20 fps, is supported in an oversampling mode in which a majority voting scheme for decoding data is applied. A low frame rate camera, i.e., when the frame rate drops to less than 20 fps at some certain time, is supported by an error detection mode in which any missing data sub-packet is detected in decoding and later corrected by external code. Numerical results and valuable analysis are also included to indicate the capability of the proposed schemes.