A Shot-Noise Limited 420 Mbps Visible Light Communication System using Commerical Off-the-Shelf Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM)

A commercial off-the-shelf silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) has been incorporated into a photon counting VLC receiver. In order to minimize the number of background counts in 500 lux of ambient light this receiver is used in conjunction with a 405 nm transmitter, specifically a laser diode. Data was transmitted over the resulting link using on-off keying and a bit-error-rate (BER) of less than 10−3 was achieved for data-rates greater than 420 Mbps. Furthermore, these data rates were achieved with received optical powers of 10 nW (−50 dBm). This means that they are orders of magnitude more sensitive than receivers that use PIN photodiodes.