Delta-sigma modulated visible light communication illumination system using a projector with the digital micro-mirror device

There is a unique transmission method of visible light communication (VLC) that can transmit multiple data in multiple directions simultaneously by using a projector with the digital micro-mirror device (DMD). Previously, we proposed a method of transmitting data from the projector that transmits digitally modulated VLC signal from each pixel, and in this paper, we propose an extension of the method to transmit audio signal by using a special type of modulation called delta-sigma-modulation (DSM). The DSM-VLC system employs a simple receiver that comprises simple analog electric circuits, which contribute to low power consumption. We made a DSM-VLC prototype and verified that the prototype was able to send four different waves to different directions. Additionally, the experiments’ results agree very well with the simulation results. Furthermore, we designed two types of DSM: pulse width modulation (PWM) and pulse density modulation (PDM), and we verified that the PDM-VLC is better than the PWM-VLC regarding the DMD switching frequency’s efficiency. Our proposed DSM-VLC can be used for such applications as voice information guidance systems with direction-selective messages.