Coexistence of directional and non-directional technologies in 6G wireless dense networks

Dense networks are characterized by the prevalence of wireless access points (APs) in close proximity to a population of user devices on a similar scale. By increasing AP density, the aggregate data consumption of a system can be dramatically increased. In this dissertation we consider dense deployment of directional visible light APs. Firstly, we analyze the performance of a visible light communication (VLC) link and propose algorithmic methods as well as novel receiver structures to enhance its quality. Secondly, we study handover algorithms and investigate an AP placement strategy that ties to the system outage probability. Thirdly, we use a geometric model for an indoor space and a reference optical channel model to formulate an optimization problem that proposes a dynamic field of view (FOV) receiver with a goal of optimizing receiver FOV for maximum signal to noise ratio (SNR). From the promising results we get, we then propose the dynamic FOV technique with receiver tracking capability. Its results show an average SNR increase of up to 40% when compared to a fixed FOV receiver. These results motivate the adoption of dynamic pointing and adaptive FOV at the receiver in order to realize improved performance for mobile devices in an optical wireless dense network. This opts us to study interference in VLC systems and how to mitigate it using our proposed receivers. In the context of multi-user networks, we formulate two main novel optimization problems i) a joint optimization of transmit emission pattern and transmit power while satisfying illumination requirements and ii) an optimization to allocate users, balance the network load and optimize device FOV for best performance. We then evaluate the effect of self-blockage as well as random human blockers on our proposed receivers. Finally, we propose to deploy the VLC system in a hybrid setting of other technologies to evaluate the overall system performance for future 6G networks.2022-01-17T00:00:00

A Survey of Positioning Systems Using Visible LED Lights

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.As Global Positioning System (GPS) cannot provide satisfying performance in indoor environments, indoor positioning technology, which utilizes indoor wireless signals instead of GPS signals, has grown rapidly in recent years. Meanwhile, visible light communication (VLC) using light devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been deemed to be a promising candidate in the heterogeneous wireless networks that may collaborate with radio frequencies (RF) wireless networks. In particular, light-fidelity has a great potential for deployment in future indoor environments because of its high throughput and security advantages. This paper provides a comprehensive study of a novel positioning technology based on visible white LED lights, which has attracted much attention from both academia and industry. The essential characteristics and principles of this system are deeply discussed, and relevant positioning algorithms and designs are classified and elaborated. This paper undertakes a thorough investigation into current LED-based indoor positioning systems and compares their performance through many aspects, such as test environment, accuracy, and cost. It presents indoor hybrid positioning systems among VLC and other systems (e.g., inertial sensors and RF systems). We also review and classify outdoor VLC positioning applications for the first time. Finally, this paper surveys major advances as well as open issues, challenges, and future research directions in VLC positioning systems.Peer reviewe

Heterogeneous integration of optical wireless communications within next generation networks

Unprecedented traffic growth is expected in future wireless networks and new technologies will be needed to satisfy demand. Optical wireless (OW) communication offers vast unused spectrum and high area spectral efficiency. In this work, optical cells are envisioned as supplementary access points within heterogeneous RF/OW networks. These networks opportunistically offload traffic to optical cells while utilizing the RF cell for highly mobile devices and devices that lack a reliable OW connection. Visible light communication (VLC) is considered as a potential OW technology due to the increasing adoption of solid state lighting for indoor illumination. Results of this work focus on a full system view of RF/OW HetNets with three primary areas of analysis. First, the need for network densication beyond current RF small cell implementations is evaluated. A media independent model is developed and results are presented that provide motivation for the adoption of hyper dense small cells as complementary components within multi-tier networks. Next, the relationships between RF and OW constraints and link characterization parameters are evaluated in order to define methods for fair comparison when user-centric channel selection criteria are used. RF and OW noise and interference characterization techniques are compared and common OW characterization models are demonstrated to show errors in excess of 100x when dominant interferers are present. Finally, dynamic characteristics of hyper dense OW networks are investigated in order to optimize traffic distribution from a network-centric perspective. A Kalman Filter model is presented to predict device motion for improved channel selection and a novel OW range expansion technique is presented that dynamically alters coverage regions of OW cells by 50%. In addition to analytical results, the dissertation describes two tools that have been created for evaluation of RF/OW HetNets. A communication and lighting simulation toolkit has been developed for modeling and evaluation of environments with VLC-enabled luminaires. The toolkit enhances an iterative site based impulse response simulator model to utilize GPU acceleration and achieves 10x speedup over the previous model. A software defined testbed for OW has also been proposed and applied. The testbed implements a VLC link and a heterogeneous RF/VLC connection that demonstrates the RF/OW HetNet concept as proof of concept

MIMO free-space optical communication employing subcarrier intensity modulation in atmospheric turbulence channels

In this paper, we analyse the error performance of transmitter/receiver array free-space optical (FSO) communication system employing binary phase shift keying (BPSK) subcarrier intensity modulation (SIM) in clear but turbulent atmospheric channel. Subcarrier modulation is employed to eliminate the need for adaptive threshold detector. Direct detection is employed at the receiver and each subcarrier is subsequently demodulated coherently. The effect of irradiance fading is mitigated with an array of lasers and photodetectors. The received signals are linearly combined using the optimal maximum ratio combining (MRC), the equal gain combining (EGC) and the selection combining (SelC). The bit error rate (BER) equations are derived considering additive white Gaussian noise and log normal intensity fluctuations. This work is part of the EU COST actions and EU projects

Anticipatory User-Association for Indoor Visible Light Communications: Light, Follow Me!

In this paper, a radically new anticipatory perspective is taken into account when designing the user-to-Access Point (AP) associations for indoor Visible Light Communications (VLC) networks, in the presence of users' mobility and wirelesstraffic dynamics. In its simplest guise, by considering the users' future locations and their predicted traffic dynamics, the novel anticipatory association prepares the APs for users in advance, resulting in an enhanced location- and delay-awareness. This is technically realised by our contrived design of an efficient approximate dynamic programming algorithm. More importantly, our study is in contrast to most of the current research in the area of indoor VLC networks, where static network environment was mainly considered. Hence, our study is able to draw insights on the performance trade-off between delay and throughput in dynamic indoor VLC networks. It is shown that the novel anticipatory design is capable of significantly outperforming the conventional benchmarking designs, striking an attractive performance trade-off between delay and throughput. Quantitatively, the average system queue backlog is reduced from 15 [ms] to 8 [ms], when comparing the design advocated to the conventional benchmark at the per-user throughput of 100 [Mbps], in a 15×15×5 [m 3 ] indoor environment associated with 8×8 APs and 20 users walking at 1 [m/s]