Abstract. This paper shows for the first time that the problem of continuous downhole
monitoring in the oil and gas industry is effectively solved through the use of visible light
communication (VLC). As a reliable, flexible and low-cost method, VLC can meet the critical need
of operators to maintain production efficiency and optimize gas well performance. The proposed VLC
system uses a Light Emitting Diode (LED) transmitter and a highly sensitive single photon detection
receiver called a Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD). The latter plays an important role in
enabling communication over long distances, and the fact that there is no ambient light in the gas pipe
is exploited.In particular, the absence of ambient light provides a high signal to noise ratio (SNR) in a
receiver that operates in photon counting mode. In this study, the bit error rate (BER) performance of
the system is simulated for a 4 km long metal pipe. The proposed system is shown to be more energy
efficient than traditional methods, which is important because the transmitter is assumed to be battery
powered. In addition, the theoretical BER performance is calculated and compared with simulation
results.

Keywords: wireless optical communication (OWC), visible communication