Applications of light emitting diodes as sensors of their own emitted light

In literature, it is known that a Light Emitting Diode (LED) could be used as a light sensor. It is also known that its emitted light spectrum and sensitivity spectrum can be partially overlapped. This work presents how commercial LEDs can be used as light emitters and simultaneously as sensors of the reflected portion of the light emitted by themselves. The realized devices present a unique characteristic: the transmitter and the receiver coincide spatially as they are the same device. This ensures the perfect overlapping between transmission and reception radiation lobes that could provide many benefits in several applications like as distance measurements or image sensors. Some simple electronic configurations that use LEDs as detectors of their own emitted light are presented. It has been also demonstrated how these LEDsTx-Rx can work as image sensors by acquiring an image of a simple test object, and how they can realize distance sensors with respect to other known techniques. Further advantages can be obtained by realizing LEDTx-Rx array in single integrated devices. With the realization of such devices, it will be also possible to experiment new constructive solutions for commonly used applications, without the need of using separate emitter and receiver.