4 research outputs found
Lights and Shadows: A Comprehensive Survey on Cooperative and Precoding Schemes to Overcome LOS Blockage and Interference in Indoor VLC
Visible light communications (VLC) have received significant attention as a way of moving part of the saturated indoor wireless traffic to the wide and unregulated visible optical spectrum. Nowadays, VLC are considered as a suitable technology, for several applications such as high-rate data transmission, supporting internet of things communications or positioning. The signal processing originally derived from radio-frequency (RF) systems such as cooperative or precoding schemes can be applied to VLC. However, its implementation is not straightforward. Furthermore, unlike RF transmission, VLC present a predominant line-of-sight link, although a weak non-LoS component may appear due to the reflection of the light on walls, floor, ceiling and nearby objects. Blocking effects may compromise the performance of the aforementioned transmission schemes. There exist several surveys in the literature focused on VLC and its applications, but the management of the shadowing and interference in VLC requires a comprehensive study. To fill this gap, this work introduces the implementation of cooperative and precoding schemes to VLC, while remarking their benefits and drawbacks for overcoming the shadowing effects. After that, the combination of both cooperative and precoding schemes is analyzed as a way of providing resilient VLC networks. Finally, we propose several open issues that the cooperative and precoding schemes must face in order to provide satisfactory VLC performance in indoor scenarios.This work has been supported partially by Spanish National Project TERESA-ADA(TEC2017-90093-C3-2-R) (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE), the research project GEOVEOLUZ-CM-UC3Mfunded by the call “Programa de apoyo a la realización de proyectos interdisciplinares de I+D parajóvenes investigadores de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid 2019-2020” under the frame ofthe Convenio Plurianual Comunidad de Madrid-Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and projectMadrid Flight on Chip (Innovation Cooperative Projects Comunidad of Madrid - HUBS 2018/MadridFlightOnChip). Additionally, it has been supported partially by the Juan de la CiervaIncorporación grant IJC2019-040317-I and Juan de la Cierva Formación grant (FJC2019-039541-I/AEI/10.13039/501100011033)
Design and performance analysis of optical attocell networks
The exponentially increasing demand for high-speed wireless communications will no longer
be satisfied by the traditional radio frequency (RF) in the near future due to its limited spectrum
and overutilization. To resolve this imminent issue, industrial and research communities have
been looking into alternative technologies for communication. Among them, visible light communication
(VLC) has attracted much attention because it utilizes the unlicensed, free and safe
spectrum, whose bandwidth is thousand times larger than the entire RF spectrum. Moreover,
VLC can be integrated into existing lighting systems to offer a dual-purpose, cost-effective and
energy-efficient solution for next-generation small-cell networks (SCNs), giving birth to the
concept of optical attocell networks.
Most relevant works in the literature rely on system simulations to quantify the performance
of attocell networks, which suffer from high computational complexity and provide limited
insights about the network. Mathematical tools, on the other hand, are more tractable and
scalable and are shown to closely approximate practical systems. The presented work utilizes
stochastic geometry for downlink evaluation of optical attocell networks, where the co-channel
interference (CCI) surpasses noise and becomes the limiting factor of the link throughput. By
studying the moment generating function (MGF) of the aggregate interference, a theoretical
framework for modeling the distribution of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is
presented, which allows important performance metrics such as the coverage probability and
link throughput to be derived. Depending on the source of interference, CCI can be classified
into two categories: inter-cell interference (ICI) and intra-cell interference. In this work,
both types of interference are characterized, based on which effective interference mitigation
techniques such as the coordinated multipoint (CoMP), power-domain multiplexing and successive
interference cancellation (SIC) are devised. The proposed mathematical framework is
applicable to attocell networks with and without such interference mitigation techniques.
Compared to RF networks, optical attocell networks are inherently more secure in the physical
layer because visible light does not penetrate through opaque walls. This work analytically
quantifies the physical-layer security of attocell networks from an information-theoretic point of
view. Secrecy enhancement techniques such as AP cooperation and eavesdropper-free protected
zones are also discussed. It is shown that compared to AP cooperation, implementing secrecy
protected zones is more effective and it can contribute significantly to the network security