Evaluation of the SFSK-OOK integrated PLC-VLC system under the influence of sunlight

Abstract: With the widespread of light emitting diodes (LEDs) as a primary source of illumination, visible light communication (VLC) offers a lot of potentials by providing both resources and energy saving advantages. This paper presents a practical implementation of an integration of Power Line Communication (PLC) and VLC. The system uses spread frequency shift keying (S-FSK) and on-off keying (OOK) in the PLC and VLC channel respectively. The system is of low complexity, low cost and dedicated to enhance low data rate application of PLC technology. The practical design is compatible with the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) band A and the test are done on a Chinese home environment where the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) specifies a 3 kHz to 500 kHz band. Results illustrating the effect of sunlight on this system are presented

Inter-building PLC-VLC integration based on PSK and CSK techniques

Abstract: This paper presents the implementation of an integration technique used to combine power line commu- nications (PLC) and visible light communications (VLC) channels in inter-building scenarios. It considers the narrow band PLC (NBPLC). Phase-shift keying (PSK) is used to convey the information over the PLC link and colour shift keying (CSK) technique is used on the VLC link. The colour wheel method is exploited to map PSK symbols to colours.We define a parameter x, which represents different magnitudes of the PSK complex symbol observed over the PLC channel. x is adjusted to an optimal value to meet the requirement of the CSK design. The bit error rate (BER) is analysed and the performance of the system is presented for multiple values of the modulus of the detected PSK symbol. A practical implementation is performed to verify the PSK-CSK mapping method. The impact of the sun’s rays on the red-green-blue (RGB) symbols is analysed and the interference source is highlighted