Spatial and wavelength division multiplexing for high-speed VLC systems: An overview

White light emitting diodes (LEDs) are becoming the primary source of illumination for the home and office environment. These LEDs can be intensity modulated to transmit high-speed data via an optical carrier. As a result, there is a paradigm shift in indoor wireless communication as the illumination infrastructure can be reused for data communications. It is widely expected that visible light communication (VLC) system will play a significant role in realizing the high-speed data communication envisaged for 5G connectivity. The goal of VLC systems is to provide a reliable and ubiquitous communication link that is an order of magnitude faster than current radio frequency (RF) links. In order to support the high data rates required for the current and future generations of communication systems, a number of techniques were explored for VLC by a number of research groups worldwide. This paper provides an overview of spatial and wavelength division multiplexing that has enabled multi-Gb/s transmission speeds in VLC using low bandwidth LEDs

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

A review of gallium nitride LEDs for multi-gigabit-per-second visible light data communications

The field of visible light communications (VLC) has gained significant interest over the last decade, in both fibre and free-space embodiments. In fibre systems, the availability of low cost plastic optical fibre (POF) that is compatible with visible data communications has been a key enabler. In free-space applications, the availability of hundreds of THz of the unregulated spectrum makes VLC attractive for wireless communications. This paper provides an overview of the recent developments in VLC systems based on gallium nitride (GaN) light-emitting diodes (LEDs), covering aspects from sources to systems. The state-of-the-art technology enabling bandwidth of GaN LEDs in the range of >400 MHz is explored. Furthermore, advances in key technologies, including advanced modulation, equalisation, and multiplexing that have enabled free-space VLC data rates beyond 10 Gb/s are also outlined

Impact of Liquid Crystal Based Interference Mitigation and Precoding on the Multiuser Performance of VLC Massive MIMO Arrays

In visible light communication systems, the ability to suppress interference caused by other light sources is a major benefit towards performance improvements. Especially for large transmitter arrays or even multi-cell arrangements, the interference problem needs to be handled. In previous work, we have presented a liquid crystal display (LCD) used as an adaptive interference-suppression filter mounted in front of each photodetector. The display elements are switched on and off in such a way that light emitted by unwanted light sources ideally is blocked, but light emitted by desired light sources reaches the detector. The pattern generated by the LC display has strong impact on the system performance. In this paper, we propose combined precoding in conjunction with LCD-based interference suppression in order to increase the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and to ensure user fairness in massive MIMO scenarios. The suggested precoding strategy uses a new heuristic optimization approach based on the Santa Claus problem on unrelated machines known from computer sciences, and employs only binary entries in the weighting matrix. Corresponding results are compared with a genetic evolutionary optimization strategy and with conventional zero-forcing precoding. Regarding performance evaluation, we perform numerical ray-tracing simulations and present a room-scale VLC testbed for experimental verification

Camera Based Localization for Indoor Optical Wireless Networks

The main focus of this work is to implement device localization in an indoor communication network which employs short range Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) using pencil beams. OWC is becoming increasingly important as a solution to the shortage of available radio spectrum. In order to counter this problem, a radical new approach is proposed by performing wireless communication using optical rather than radio techniques, by deploying optical pencil beam technologies to provide users with access to an indoor optical fiber infrastructure. An architecture based on free-space optics has been adopted. The narrow infrared beam is considered a good solution because of its ability to optimally carry all the information which the optical fiber can transport, in an energy-efficient way. Beam Steered - Infrared Light Communication (BS-ILC) brings the light only where is needed. Multiple beams may independently serve user devices within a room, hence each device can get a non-shared capacity without conflicts with other devices. Infrared light beams, additionally, are allowed to be operated at a higher power than visible light beams, due to a higher eye safety threshold for infrared light. Together with the directivity of a beam, this implies that the received signal-to-noise ratio with BS-ILC can be substantially higher than with Visible Light Communication (VLC), enabling a higher data rate and longer reach at better power efficiency. Current BS-ILC prototypes allow multiple beams with over 100 Gbit/s per beam. This high performance can only be achieved with small footprints, hence the system needs to know the exact location of user devices. In this thesis, an accurate and fast localization/tracking technique using a low-cost camera and simple image processing is presented

Interference Suppression in Massive MIMO VLC Systems

The focus of this dissertation is on the development and evaluation of methods and principles to mitigate interference in multiuser visible light communication (VLC) systems using several transmitters. All components of such a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system are considered and transformed into a communication system model, while also paying particular attention to the hardware requirements of different modulation schemes. By analyzing all steps in the communication process, the inter-channel interference between users is identified as the most critical aspect. Several methods of suppressing this kind of interference, i.e. to split the MIMO channel into parallel single channels, are discussed, and a novel active LCD-based interference suppression principle at the receiver side is introduced as main aspect of this work. This technique enables a dynamic adaption of the physical channel: compared to solely software-based or static approaches, the LCD interference suppression filter achieves adaptive channel separation without altering the characteristics of the transmitter lights. This is especially advantageous in dual-use scenarios with illumination requirements. Additionally, external interferers, like natural light or transmitter light sources of neighboring cells in a multicell setting, can also be suppressed without requiring any control over them. Each user's LCD filter is placed in front of the corresponding photodetector and configured in such a way that only light from desired transmitters can reach the detector by setting only the appropriate pixels to transparent, while light from unwanted transmitters remains blocked. The effectiveness of this method is tested and benchmarked against zero-forcing (ZF) precoding in different scenarios and applications by numerical simulations and also verified experimentally in a large MIMO VLC testbed created specifically for this purpose

TechNews digests: Jan - Mar 2010

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month