Current-Mirror Based Ambient Light Rejection Technique for VLC Receiver

Ambient light interference is a significant hurdle as it creates unwanted DC current in optical receivers used for visible light communication, infrared communication, etc., that face solar irradiance in the daytime or unwanted light sources such as bulbs at night. This paper presents a current mirror-based receiver topology. By introducing a current-to-voltage converter module, the receiver can handily remove the background interference. A prototype receiver is designed using a 180 nm CMOS process operating at a speed of 160 MHz. It can cancel up to 100 µA of DC background interference while maintaining a low power dissipation of 7 mW from a 1.8 V supply. Additionally, it achieves a transimpedance gain of 120 dBΩ and an input referred noise of 10 pA/ Hz.