ISI Modeling and BER Performance for Rotating Light-Trail Image Sensor Communication

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical model for rotating light-trail image sensor communication, deriving BER expressions and optimizing control angles for improved throughput under reliability constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a novel light trail model with a probabilistic noise component and an adjacent-only ISI approximation validated by simulations and experiments.

Findings

Derived closed-form BER expressions using the $Q$-function.

Validated the ISI model's accuracy against Monte Carlo simulations.

Optimized control angles to maximize throughput while maintaining target BER.

Abstract

Image sensor communication (ISC) employing a propeller-LED transmitter encodes data along rotating light trails. We present an analytical framework that (i) constructs a single-LED, single-blink light trail model that maps optical power to pixel values, and (ii) integrates a probabilistic noise model to derive a closed-form bit-error rate (BER) using the $Q$-function. Trimodal pixel-value histograms motivate an adjacent-only inter-symbol interference (ISI) model in which the decision at segment $j$ depends on adjacent segments. Applying a hardest-pair midpoint threshold yields per-segment BER and a general BER after marginalization. We further provide practical sufficiency conditions under which adjacent-only ISI is adequate, and validate its tightness against Monte Carlo simulations and experimental results. Using the analytical BER, we select the control angle that maximizes throughput while satisfying a target BER reliability constraint.