Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology

The present work describes the development of an organic photodiode (OPD) receiver for high-speed optical wireless communication. To determine the optimal communication design, we compare two different types of photoelectric conversion layers: bulk heterojunction (BHJ) and planar heterojunction (PHJ). The BHJ-OPD device has a -3 dB bandwidth of 0.65 MHz (at zero bias) and a maximum of 1.4 MHz (at -4 V bias). We demonstrate a 150 Mbps single-channel visible light communication (VLC) data rate using this device by combining pre-equalization and machine learning (ML)-based digital signal processing (DSP). To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the highest data rate ever achieved on an OPD-based VLC system by a factor of 40 over the previous fastest reported. Additionally, the proposed OPD receiver achieves orders of magnitude higher spectral efficiency than the previously reported organic photovoltaic (OPV)-based receivers.