Gallium nitride-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have revolutionized the lighting industry with their efficient generation of blue and green light. While broad-area (square millimetre) devices have become the dominant LED lighting technology, fabricating LEDs into micro-scale pixels (micro-LEDs) yields further advantages for optical wireless communications (OWC), and for the development of smart-lighting applications such as tracking and imaging. The smaller active areas of micro-LEDs result in high current density operation, providing high modulation bandwidths and increased optical power density. Fabricating micro-LEDs in array formats allows device layouts to be tailored for target applications and provides additional degrees of freedom for OWC systems. Temporal and spatial control is crucial to use the full potential of these micro-scale sources, and is achieved by bonding arrays to pitch-matched complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor control electronics. These compact, integrated chips operate as digital-to-light converters, providing optical signals from digital inputs. Applying the devices as projection systems allows structured light patterns to be used for tracking and self-location, while simultaneously providing space-division multiple access communication links. The high-speed nature of micro-LED array devices, combined with spatial and temporal control, allows many modes of operation for OWC providing complex functionality with chip-scale devices. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Optical wireless communication’.

We present integration of singulated micron-sized light emitting diodes (micro-LEDs) directly onto a silicon CMOS drive chip using a transfer printing method. An 8x8 micro-LED device array with individual control over each pixel is demonstrated with modulation bandwidths up to 50 MHz, limited by the large modulation depth of the driver chip. The 2 kHz frame rate CMOS driver also incorporates a Single Photon Avalanche Diode device thus allowing detection and transmission functionality on a single integrated chip. Visible light communications at data rates up to 1 Mbps, and time-of-flight ranging with cm-scale resolution are demonstrated using this hybrid integrated system.

Solid-state camera systems are now widely available in portable consumer electronics, providing potential receivers for visible light communications in every device. Typically, data rates with camera receivers are limited by the 60 fps frame rate of both the image sensor and projector systems. Recent developments in high-frame rate microdisplays and slow-motion cameras for smartphones now permit high-speed, spatially structured signals to be transmitted and captured. Here, we present a method for transmitting data to a smartphone using a CMOS-controlled micro-LED projector system. Spatial patterns are projected onto a wall at a refresh rate of 480 Hz, which can be captured by the smartphone’s 960 fps camera. Data transfer is performed over meter scale distances, and the use of an alignment frame gives the system a level of tolerance to motion and misalignment. The current system allows data transmission at a peak rate of 122.88 kb/s using a 16 × 16 micro-LED array, which can be readily scaled to Mb/s rates with a higher resolution transmitter.

Small satellites have challenging size weight and power requirements for communications modules, which we address here by using chip-scale light-emitting diode (LED) transmitters and single-photon avalanche diode receivers. Data rates of 100 Mb/s have been demonstrated at a sensitivity of −55.2 dBm, and simulations with supporting experimental work indicate ranges in excess of 1 km are feasible with a directional gain of up to 52 dBi and comparatively modest pointing requirements. A 750 m, 20 Mb/s link using a single micro-LED has been demonstrated experimentally. The low electrical power requirements and compact, semiconductor nature of these devices offer high data rate, high sensitivity communications for small satellite platforms.

We report a CMOS integrated micro-LED array capable of generating discrete optical output power levels. A 16 × 16 array of individually addressable pixels are on-off controlled through parallel logic signals. With carefully selected groups of LEDs driven together, signals suitable for discrete transmission schemes are produced. The linearity of the device is assessed, and data transmission using pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is performed. Error-free transmission at a symbol rate of 100 MSamples/s is demonstrated with 4-PAM, yielding a data rate of 200 Mb/s. For 8-PAM, encoding is required to overcome the baseline wander from the receiver, reducing the data rate to 150 Mb/s. We also present an experimental proof-of-concept demonstration of discrete-level OFDM, achieving a spectral efficiency of 3.96 bits/s/Hz.

Multispectral and 3-D imaging are useful for a wide variety of applications, adding valuable spectral and depth information for image analysis. Single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) based imaging systems provide photon time-of-arrival information, and can be used for imaging with time-correlated single photon counting techniques. Here we demonstrate an LED based synchronised illumination system, where temporally structured light can be used to relate time-of-arrival to specific wavelengths, thus recovering reflectance information. Cross-correlation of the received multi-peak histogram with a reference measurement yields a time delay, allowing depth information to be determined with cm-scale resolution despite the long sequence of relatively wide (∼10 ns) pulses. Using commercial LEDs and a SPAD imaging array, multispectral 3-D imaging is demonstrated across 9 visible wavelength bands.