Design and Implementation of a Monitoring System using Optical Camera Communication for a Smart Factory

Wireless technologies that are based on radio frequencies are currently widely used, with numerous applications around the world. However, they pose some disadvantages to human health. High frequencies can have potentially harmful effects on children, hospital patients, and even healthy people if the signal power exceeds the permitted standard. Conversely, the use of visible light for data transmission is a trend that presents new options, including optical wireless communication, optical camera communication, and visible light communication. This paper proposes a modulation scheme based on on-off keying in the time domain, which is applied to a monitoring system using optical camera communication. This scheme has various compatible supports for the global-shutter camera and rolling-shutter camera, which are popular commercially available cameras. Furthermore, this scheme facilitates a low-cost monitoring system. By using small light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and controlling the exposure time in a single camera, the camera, as a receiver, can simultaneously detect signals from up to 10 sensor devices in different positions at a maximum distance of up to 50 m, with a low error rate.