Optical MIMO communication systems under illumination constraints

Technology for wireless information access has enabled innovation of 'smart' portable consumer devices. These have been widely adopted and have become an integral part of our daily lives. They need ubiquitous connectivity to the internet to provide value added services, maximize their functionality and create a smarter world to live in. Cisco's visual networking index currently predicts wireless data consumption to increase by 61% per year. This will put additional stress on the already stressed wireless access network infrastructure creating a phenomenon called 'spectrum crunch'. At the same time, the solid state devices industry has made remarkable advances in energy efficient light-emitting-diodes (LED). The lighting industry is rapidly adopting LEDs to provide illumination in indoor spaces. Lighting fixtures are positioned to support human activities and thus are well located to act as wireless access points. The visible spectrum (380 nm - 780 nm) is yet unregulated and untapped for wireless access. This provides unique opportunity to upgrade existing lighting infrastructure and create a dense grid of small cells by using this additional 'optical' wireless bandwidth. Under the above model, lighting fixtures will service dual missions of illumination and access points for optical wireless communication (OWC). This dissertation investigates multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) optical wireless broadcast system under unique constraints imposed by the optical channel and illumination requirements. Sample indexed spatial orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SIS-OFDM) and metameric modulation (MM) are proposed to achieve higher spectral efficiency by exploiting dimensions of space and color respectively in addition to time and frequency. SIS-OFDM can provide significant additional spectral efficiency of up to (Nsc/2 - 1) x k bits/sym where Nsc is total number of subcarriers and k is number of bits per underlying spatial modulation symbol. MM always generates the true requested illumination color and has the potential to provide better color rendering by incorporating multiple LEDs. A normalization framework is then developed to analyze performance of optical MIMO imaging systems. Performance improvements of up to 45 dB for optical systems have been achieved by decorrelating spatially separate links by incorporating an imaging receiver. The dissertation also studies the impact of visual perception on performance of color shift keying as specified in IEEE 802.15.7 standard. It shows that non-linearity for a practical system can have a performance penalty of up to 15 dB when compared to the simplified linear system abstraction as proposed in the standard. Luminous-signal-to-noise ratio, a novel metric is introduced to compare performance of optical modulation techniques operating at same illumination intensity. The dissertation then introduces singular value decomposition based OWC system architecture to incorporate illumination constraints independent of communication constraints in a MIMO system. It then studies design paradigm for a multi-colored wavelength division multiplexed indoor OWC system

Experimental Characterisation and Modelling of Atmospheric Fog and Turbulence in FSO

Free space optical (FSO) communication uses visible or infrared (IR) wavelengths to broadcast high-speed data wirelessly through the atmospheric channel. The performance of FSO communications is mainly dependent on the unpredictable atmospheric channel such as fog, smoke and temperature dependent turbulence. However, as the real outdoor atmosphere (ROA) is time varying and heterogeneous in nature as well as depending on the magnitude and intensity of different weather conditions, carrying out a proper link assessment under specific weather conditions becomes a challenging task. Investigation and modelling the ROA under diverse atmospheric conditions is still a great challenge in FSO communications. Hence a dedicated indoor atmospheric chamber is designed and built to produce controlled atmosphere as necessary to mimic the ROA as closely as possible. The experimental results indicate that the fog attenuation is wavelength dependent for all visibility V ranges, which contradicts the Kim model for V < 0.5 km. The obtained result validates that Kim model needs to be revised for V < 0.5 km in order to correctly predict the wavelength dependent fog attenuation. Also, there are no experimental data and empirical model available for FSO links in diverse smoke conditions, which are common in urban areas. Therefore, a new empirical model is proposed to evaluate the wavelength dependent fog and smoke attenuation by reconsidering the q value as a function of wavelength rather than visibility. The BER performance of an FSO system is theoretically and experimentally evaluated for OOK- NRZ, OOK-RZ and 4-PPM formats for Ethernet line data-rates from light to dense fog conditions. A BER of 10-6 (Q-factor ≈ 4.7) is achieved at dense fog (transmittance, T = 0.33) condition using 4-PPM than OOK-NRZ and OOK-RZ modulation schemes due to its high peak-to-average power ratio albeit at the expense of doubling the bandwidth. The effects of fog on OOK-NRZ, 4-PAM and BPSK are also experimentally investigated. In comparison to 4-PAM and OOK-NRZ signals, the BPSK modulation signalling format is more robust against the effects of fog. Moreover, the effects of using different average transmitted optical communication powers Popton the T and the received Q-factor using the OOK-NRZ modulation scheme are also investigated for light and dense fog conditions. The results show that for an FSO system operating at a Q-factor of 4.7 (for BER = 10-6), the required Q-factor is achieved at T of 48% under the thick fog condition by increasing Popt to 1.07 dBm, whereas the values of T are 55% and ~70% for the transmit power of 0.56 dBm and -0.7 dBm, respectively. The experimental characterisation and investigation of the atmospheric turbulence effect on the Ethernet and Fast-Ethernet FSO link is reported using different modulation schemes. The experiment is carried out in a controlled laboratory environment where turbulence is generated in a dedicated indoor atmospheric chamber. The atmospheric chamber is calibrated to mimic an outdoor turbulence conditions and the measured data are verified against the theoretical predictions. The experiment also demonstrates methods to control the turbulence levels and determine the equivalence between the indoor and outdoor FSO links. The results show that the connectivity of Ethernet and Fast-Ethernet links are highly sensitive to atmospheric turbulence. The results also show that the BPSK and OOK-NRZ modulation signalling formats are more robust against the weak atmospheric turbulence conditions than PAM signal

Study, analysis and application of Optical OFDM, Single Carrier (SC) and MIMO in Intensity Modulation Direct Detection (IM/DD)

With the rapid growth of wireless data demands and saturation of radio frequency (RF) capacity, visible light communication (VLC) has become a promising candidate to complement conventional RF communication, especially for indoor short range applications. However the performance of the system depends on the propagation and type of system used. An optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (O-OFDM) together with multiple input multiple output (MIMO) in different scenario and modulation techniques are studied in the thesis. A novel optical wireless communication (OWC) multi-cell system with narrow field of view (FOV) is studied. In this system the intensity modulated beam from four light sources are used for communication. The system allows beams to be concentrated in specific areas of the room to serve multiple mobile devices with low interference and hence increase system capacity. The performance of asymmetrically clipped optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM), direct current biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) and single carrier (SC) modulation are then compared in this system considering single user and multiusers scenarios. The performance of the multi-cell is compared with single cell with wide FOV. It is shown that the capacity for multi-cell system increases with the number of users to 4 times the single user capacity. Also the findings show that multi-cell system with narrow beams can outperform a single wide beam system in terms of coverage area and hence average throughput of about 2.7 times the single wide beam system capacity. One of the impairments in line of sight (LOS) OWC systems is coverage which degrades the performance. A mobile receiver with angular diversity detectors in MIMO channels is studied. The objective is to improve the rank of the channel matrix and hence system throughput. Repetition coding (RC), spatial multiplexing (SMP) and spatial modulation (SM) concepts are used to evaluate throughput across multiple locations in a small room scenario. A novel adaptive spatial modulation (ASM) which is capable of combating channel rank deficiency is devised. Since the receiver is mobile, the channel gains are low in some locations of the room due to the lack of LOS paths between transmitters and receivers. To combat the situation adaptive modulation and per antenna rate control (PARC) is employed to maximise spectral efficiency. The throughputs for fixed transmitters and receivers are compared with the oriented/inclined detectors for different cases. Angular diversity detectors offer a better throughput improvement than the state of the art vertical detectors, for example in ASM angular diversity receiver gives throughput of about 1.6 times that of vertical detectors. Also in SMP the angular detectors offer throughput about 1.4 times that of vertical detectors. SMP gives the best performance compared to RC, SM and ASM, for example SMP gives throughput about 2.5 times that of RC in both vertical detectors and angular diversity receivers. Again SMP gives throughput about 6 times that of SM in both vertical detectors and angular diversity receivers. Also SMP provides throughput about 2 times that of ASM in both vertical detectors and angular diversity receivers. ASM exhibit improvement in throughput about average factor of 3.5 times SM performance in both vertical detectors and angular diversity detectors. As the performance of the system may be jeopardized by obstructions, specular and diffuse reflection models for indoor OWC systems using a mobile receiver with angular diversity detectors in MIMO channels are considered. The target is to improve the MIMO throughput compared to vertically oriented detectors by exploiting reflections from different reflecting surfaces in the room. The throughput across multiple locations in the small room by using RC, SMP and SM approaches is again evaluated. The results for LOS only channels against LOS with specular or diffuse reflection conditions, for both vertical and angular oriented receivers are then compared. The results show that exploiting specular and diffuse reflections provide significant improvements in link performance. For example the reflection coefficient (α) of 0.9 and the antenna separation of 0.6 m, RC diffuse model shows throughput improvement of about 1.8 times that of LOS for both vertical detectors and angular diversity receivers. SM diffuse model shows throughput improvement of about 3 times that of LOS for both vertical detectors and angular diversity receivers. ASM diffuse model shows throughput improvement of about 2 times that of LOS for both vertical detectors and angular diversity receivers. SMP diffuse model shows throughput improvement of about 1.5 times that of LOS for both vertical detectors and angular diversity receiver