This letter presents a visible light communication (VLC) system based on a single 50- μm gallium nitride light emitting diode (LED). A device of this size exhibits a 3-dB modulation bandwidth of at least 60 MHz - significantly higher than commercially available white lighting LEDs. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is employed as a modulation scheme. This enables the limited modulation bandwidth of the device to be fully used. Pre- and postequalization techniques, as well as adaptive data loading, are successfully applied to achieve a demonstration of wireless communication at speeds exceeding 3 Gb/s. To date, this is the fastest wireless VLC system using a single LED.

Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising solution to the increasing demands for wireless connectivity. Gallium nitride micro-sized light emitting diodes (micro-LEDs) are strong candidates for VLC due to their high bandwidths. Segmented violet micro-LEDs are reported in this work with electrical-to-optical bandwidths up to 655 MHz. An orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based VLC system with adaptive bit and energy loading is demonstrated, and a data transmission rate of 11.95 Gb/s is achieved with a violet micro-LED, when the nonlinear distortion of the micro-LED is the dominant noise source of the VLC system. A record 7.91 Gb/s data transmission rate is reported below the forward error correction threshold using a single pixel of the segmented array when all the noise sources of the VLC system are present.

Gallium-nitride (GaN)-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are highly efficient sources for general purpose illumination. Visible light communications (VLC) uses these sources to supplement existing wireless communications by offering a large, licence-free region of optical spectrum. Here, we report on progress in the development of micro-scale GaN LEDs (micro-LEDs), optimized for VLC. These blue-emitting micro-LEDs are shown to have very high electrical-to-optical modulation bandwidths, exceeding 800 MHz. The data transmission capabilities of the micro-LEDs are illustrated by demonstrations using ON–OFF-keying, pulse-amplitude modulation, and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing modulation schemes to transmit data over free space at the rates of 1.7, 3.4, and 5 Gb/s, respectively.

Displays based on microsized gallium nitride light-emitting diodes possess extraordinary brightness. It is demonstrated here both theoretically and experimentally that the layout of the n-contact in these devices is important for the best device performance. We highlight, in particular, the significance of a nonthermal increase of differential resistance upon multipixel operation. These findings underpin the realization of a blue microdisplay with a luminance of 10 ⁶ cd/m ² .

Visible light communications using a Gallium-nitride (GaN) laser diode is reported. Devices, which are cased in TO packages, show modulation bandwidths of up to 1.4 GHz. We demonstrate error-free data transmission, defined as transmission of $1\times {10}^{-9}$ bits without any errors, at $2.5\mathrm{Gbit}/\mathrm{s}$ with a sensitivity of 11.5 dBm.

An on-chip multi-channel visible light communication (VLC) system is realized through a blue (450 nm) GaN-based micron-size light-emitting diode (μLED) array integrated with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) electronics. When driven by a custom-made CMOS driving board with 16 independent parallel data input ports, this μLED array device is computer controllable via a standard USB interface and is capable of delivering high speed parallel data streams for VLC. A total maximum error-free data transmission rate of 1.5 Gbit/s is achieved over free space by modulating four μLED pixels simultaneously using an on-off key non-return to zero modulation scheme. Electrical and optical crosstalk of the system has also been investigated in detail and the further optimization of CMOS design to minimize the crosstalk is proposed.