EVM and Achievable Data Rate Analysis of Clipped OFDM Signals in Visible Light Communication

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been considered for visible light communication (VLC) thanks to its ability to boost data rates as well as its robustness against frequency-selective fading channels. A major disadvantage of OFDM is the large dynamic range of its time-domain waveforms, making OFDM vulnerable to nonlinearity of light emitting diodes (LEDs). DC biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) and asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) are two popular OFDM techniques developed for the VLC. In this paper, we will analyze the performance of the DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM signals in terms of error vector magnitude (EVM), signal-to-distortion ratio (SDR), and achievable data rates under both average optical power and dynamic optical power constraints. EVM is a commonly used metric to characterize distortions. We will describe an approach to numerically calculate the EVM for DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM. We will derive the optimum biasing ratio in the sense of minimizing EVM for DCO-OFDM. Additionally, we will formulate the EVM minimization problem as a convex linear optimization problem and obtain an EVM lower bound against which to compare the DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM techniques. We will prove that the ACO-OFDM can achieve the lower bound. Average optical power and dynamic optical power are two main constraints in VLC. We will derive the achievable data rates under these two constraints for both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel and frequency-selective channel. We will compare the performance of DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM under different power constraint scenarios

Performance analysis of modified asymmetrically-clipped optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems

A modification to the Asymmetrically-Clipped Optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (ACO-OFDM) technique is proposed through unipolar encoding. A performance analysis of the Bit Error Rate (BER) is developed and Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to verify the analysis. Results are compared to that of the corresponding ACO-OFDM system under the same bit energy and transmission rate; an improvement of 1 dB is obtained at a BER of 10-4. In addition, the performance of the proposed system in the presence of atmospheric turbulence is investigated using single-input multiple-output (SIMO) configuration and its performance under that environment is compared to that of ACO-OFDM. Energy improvements of 4 dB and 2.2 dB are obtained at a BER of 10-4 for SIMO systems of 1 and 2 photodetectors at the receiver for the case of strong turbulence, respectively

Flip-OFDM for Optical Wireless Communications

We consider two uniploar OFDM techniques for optical wireless communications: asymmetric clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) and Flip-OFDM. Both techniques can be used to compensate multipath distortion effects in optical wireless channels. However, ACO-OFDM has been widely studied in the literature, while the performance of Flip-OFDM has never been investigated. In this paper, we conduct the performance analysis of Flip-OFDM and propose additional modification to the original scheme in order to compare the performance of both techniques. Finally, it is shown by simulation that both techniques have the same performance but different hardware complexities. In particular, for slow fading channels, Flip-OFDM offers 50% saving in hardware complexity over ACO-OFDM at the receiver.Comment: published in IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Paraty Brazil, Sept 201

Spectrum-Efficient Triple-Layer Hybrid Optical OFDM for IM/DD-Based Optical Wireless Communications

In this paper, a triple-layer hybrid optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (THO-OFDM) for intensity modulation with direct detection (IM/DD) systems with a high spectral efficiency is proposed. We combine N-point asymmetrically clipped optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM), N/2-point ACO-OFDM, and N/2-point pulse amplitude modulated discrete multitoned (PAM-DMT) in a single frame for simultaneous transmission. The time- and frequency-domain demodulation methods are introduced by fully exploiting the special structure of the proposed THO-OFDM. Theoretical analysis show that, the proposed THO-OFDM can reach the spectral efficiency limit of the conventional layered ACO-OFDM (LACO-OFDM). Simulation results demonstrate that, the time-domain receiver offers improved bit error rate (BER) performance compared with the frequency-domain with ∼40% reduced computation complexity when using 512 subcarriers. Furthermore, we show a 3 dB improvement in the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) compared with LACO-OFDM for the same three layers

Data Detection and Code Channel Allocation for Frequency-Domain Spread ACO-OFDM Systems Over Indoor Diffuse Wireless Channels

Future optical wireless communication systems promise to provide high-speed data transmission in indoor diffuse environments. This paper considers frequency-domain spread asymmetrically clipped optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (ACOOFDM) systems in indoor diffuse channels and aims to develop efficient data detection and code channel allocation schemes. By exploiting the frequency-domain spread concept, a linear multi-code detection scheme is proposed to maximize the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) at the receiver. The achieved SINR and bit error ratio (BER) performance are analyzed. A computationally efficient code channel allocation algorithm is proposed to improve the BER performance of the frequency-domain spread ACO-OFDM system. Numerical results show that the frequency-domain spread ACO-OFDM system outperforms conventional ACO-OFDM systems in indoor diffuse channels. Moreover, the proposed linear multi-code detection and code channel allocation algorithm can improve the performance of optical peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR