Blue micro-LED with a red/green blended polymer film for 3.5-Gbps visible light communication employing adaptive SNR-Flattening Algorithm

By the semipolar blue single GaN μ-LED and blended Ir(piq)2(acac) + CC-MP5 polymer thin film color converter, a high-speed white-light μ-LED-based system is built up for the applications of short-distance VLC. The characteristics and properties of both devices are analyzed to understand the requirements for transmission and illumination. By selecting the growing orient, the influence of QCSE is reduced in this GaN μ-LED. Meanwhile, possessing the low reflection characteristic, it is beneficial for signal modulation. For the polymer thin film color converter with a lifetime of 7.8 ns, low surface reflection and high conversion efficiency are thought of good properties. Color-converted cool white light has a CCT of around 7000 K and high color accuracy with a CRI of about 90. The APD-combined frequency responses of the GaN μ-LED and GaN μ-LED + polymer are measured as 750 MHz and 600 MHz, respectively. After the optimization by utilizing the adaptive SNR-flattening pre-emphasis algorithm, the transmission performance of the white-light μ-LED is significantly promoted. For NRZ-OOK encoding, a 1.4 Gbps 0.15-m free-space transmission is achieved with a rising time of 656.33 ps, a falling time of 493.32 ps, and a Q-factor of 4.75. Besides, in more advanced data formats, the performance of this white-light μ-LED can be better highlighted. For the same 0.15-m free-space VLC, a high-speed 3 Gbps broadband 8-QAM-OFDM transmission is fulfilled with an EVM of 23.9%, an average SNR of 12.5, and a BER below 3.8 × 10-3; while to the best of our knowledge, a record 3.5 Gbps BL-DMT transmission is implemented as well. This white-light μ-LED can also be integrated into large-scale arrays for multi-functional VLC applications.