Structured-light-assisted wireless digital optical communications

Abstract

Camera-projector-pair-based digital optical communications are attractive for safe and flexible usages, while the state-of-the-art systems suffer from various disadvantages or distortions of communication channels, including the irregularity and the non-uniform albedo of projection surfaces, the radial distortion of optical lenses, etc. In this paper, we present a novel method for digital optical communications. Assisted by structured light illumination, we overcome those disadvantages and accurately derive the models of the communication channels. First, by deriving accurate model-free coordinates maps for the camera-projector pair, we overcome the issues caused by the irregularity of projection surfaces and the radial distortion of optical lenses. Second, by normalizing received digital optical signals with calibrated system parameters, we overcome the issue arising from the non-uniform albedo of projection surfaces. Thus, with the models and all pixel-wise operations, we finally achieve robust and real-time wireless digital optical communications. Experimental results verify the validity of the proposed method.