Adaptive modulation schemes for optical wireless communication systems

Abstract

High-speed wireless optical communication links have become more popular for personal mobile applications. This is a consequence of the increasing demand from the personal information service boom. Compared to the radio frequency domain, optical wireless communication offers much higher speeds and bit rates per unit power consumption. As stated by the official infrared standard IrDA optical communication enjoys much lower power consumption than Bluetooth, with an inherent security feature while in Line of Sight (LOS) applications. There are also drawbacks such as the infrared radiation cannot penetrate walls as radio frequencies do and interference from the background contribute to the channel dispersions. Focus on the modulation aspects of the optical wireless communication, this thesis try to improve the channel immunity by utilising optimised modulation to the channel. Modulation schemes such as on off keying (OOK), pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and pulse position modulation (PPM) and pulse position and amplitude modulation PAPM schemes have been validated. The combined power and bandwidth requirements suggest that the adaptive modulation schemes can provide reliability when deployed in a real time channel, resulting in improved system performance. As a result, an adaptive modulation technique is proposed. Extensive simulations of severe noise distraction have been carried out to validate the new scheme. The simulation results indicate that the new scheme can provide increased immunity against channel noise fluctuation at a relatively low complexity. The scheme obtained formed a basis to support reliable mobile optical wireless communication applications. The adaptive scheme also takes the real time channel conditions into account, which is different from existing schemes. Guaranteed system performance can be secured without compromising power and bandwidth efficiency. This is also a new approach to realise reliable optical wireless links. Fuzzy logic control module has been developed to match the adaptive pattern