High-base vector beam encoding/decoding for visible-light communications

Polarization is a basic property of light. Different from well-known linear, circular, and elliptical polarizations, which are spatially homogeneous, a vector light beam with spatially variant polarization states has received increasing interest for its expanded functionalities. In this Letter, we present a visible-light communication link exploiting high-base vector beam encoding/decoding. Using a single phase-only spatial light modulator, we generate 16 states of vector beams representing hexadecimal numbers. In the visiblelight communication link experiment, we transmit a random high-base number sequence with 10,000 hexadecimal numbers and a 64 x 64 pixel Lena gray image with 8192 hexadecimal numbers. The bit error rate is evaluated, and zero error among all received hexadecimal numbers is achieved, showing favorable link communication performance using the high-base vector beam encoding/decoding. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America