Patent ID: 7778548

Claim:
An optical communication system which comprises lighting equipment and terminal equipment, the lighting equipment having a transmitter comprising a plurality of light-emitting elements, each light-emitting element of the plurality of light-emitting elements having a corresponding wavelength different from a wavelength of all other light-emitting elements of the plurality of light-emitting elements, the transmitter providing substantially white-light illumination of an ambient environment by a combination of light of a plurality of different wavelengths emitted by a plurality of corresponding light-emitting elements, the terminal equipment comprising a plurality of terminals, each terminal having a receiver comprising a plurality of light-receiving elements that receive optical signals wirelessly via the ambient environment from the transmitter for each of the corresponding wavelengths, wherein the transmitter divides a series of input signals into a plurality of signals corresponding to light of the different wavelengths, feeds each of the plurality of signals to the corresponding plurality of light-emitting elements, and performs code-division multiple access communication with each of the plurality of terminals by modulation of emission intensity between the plurality of light-emitting elements and the plurality of light-receiving elements in the receiver, the code-division multiple access communication using a spread code to spread the input signals over the different wavelengths that in combination define the substantially white-light illumination, and the receiver of each terminal generates output signals from reception signals of the plurality of light-receiving elements by de-spreading the reception signals using the spread code.