Flicker-Free Optical Camera Communication (OCC)

Optical camera communication (OCC) is a promising wireless communication technology that exploits the two-dimensional image sensor of digital cameras to capture and decode information sent through LED illumination. The OCC transmitter can include a single LED, an array of LEDs or a multi-pixel digital display.

The company has developed a novel OCC method that facilitates flicker-free communication between RGB-LED emitters and low framerate cameras. At the core of the method is a patented under-sampled color-switch modulation scheme that employs complementary color-pairs as data symbols. Since the pairs are "metameric matches" of the color white, the resultant LEDs illumination is perceived as uniform white to the human eye. The color-based modulation allows higher data-rate per each LED transmitter compared to similar monochromatic methods.

The technology facilitates unidirectional optical communication with electronic devices both indoors and outdoors.

Key features include:

• Flicker-free transmission thanks to under-sampled modulation scheme.
• Specific baud rate of >75 bits/second/LED using 30fps CMOS cameras.
• Uniform white light illumination at relatively low clock rates.
• Flexible transmitter design using any number of LEDs.
• High throughput via multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) method.
• Fast and reliable region of interest (RoI) detection and tracking based on distinctive color-variance.
• Self-illuminated tags – great all-round visibility under any lighting conditions.
• Easy dimming through Pulse Width Modulation (PWM).

Our OCC technology can be valuable for various applications – particularly in the smartphone space – requiring line-of-sight data transfer at low and medium rates.

Low data-rate:

• Offline-to-online bridging in physical retail & exhibitions (small low-power LED markers).
• Remote mobile engagement with out-of-home advertising (high-power linear LED markers).
• Indoor navigation/orientation (integrated LED markers).
• Indoor & outdoor augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) applications (highly visible anchors).
• Mobile authentication for access control / check-in / checkout.

Medium data-rate:

• Mobile proximity payment (extremely compact dynamic QR code alternative).
• Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication.

• Simple implementation based on off-the-shelf / widely used components.
• Best-in-class scan range/footprint due to direct LED-image decoding.
• Dynamic (digital) QR code alternative that is 10x smaller, cheaper, safer.
• Inherently secure data-link.