Distributions of Upper PAPR and Lower PAPR of OFDM Signals in Visible Light Communications

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) in visible light communications (VLC) inherits the disadvantage of high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) from OFDM in radio frequency (RF) communications. The upper peak power and lower peak power of real-valued VLC-OFDM signals are both limited by the dynamic constraints of light emitting diodes (LEDs). The efficiency and transmitted electrical power are directly related with the upper PAPR (UPAPR) and lower PAPR (LPAPR) of VLC-OFDM. In this paper, we will derive the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of UPAPR and LPAPR, and investigate the joint distribution of UPAPR and LPAPR.Comment: acceptted by IEEE ICASSP 2014. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1304.019

Orthogonal Transform Multiplexing with Memoryless Nonlinearity: a Possible Alternative to Traditional Coded-Modulation Schemes

In this paper, we propose a novel joint coding-modulation technique based on serial concatenation of orthogonal linear transform, such as discrete Fourier transform (DFT) or Walsh-Hadamard transform (WHT), with memoryless nonlinearity. We demonstrate that such a simple signal construction may exhibit properties of a random code ensemble, as a result approaching channel capacity. Our computer simulations confirm that if the decoder relies on a modified approximate message passing algorithm, the proposed modulation technique exhibits performance on par with state-of-the-art coded modulation schemes that use capacity-approaching component codes. The proposed modulation scheme could be used directly or as a pre-coder for a conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmitter, resulting in a system possessing all benefits of OFDM along with reduced peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)

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

DCO-OFDM Signals With Derated Power for Visible Light Communications Using an Optimized Adaptive Network-Based Fuzzy Inference System

Direct current-biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) signals used in visible light communications suffer from high peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) or cubic metric (CM). It strongly degrades the performance due to the great back-off necessary to avoid the clipping effect in the light-emitting diode. Thus, PAPR and CM reduction techniques become crucial to improve the system performance. In this paper, an adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is used to obtain efficient DCO-OFDM signals with a low power envelope profile. First, signals specially designed for DCO-OFDMwith very low CM, as the ones obtained from the raw cubic metric (RCM)-active constellation extension method, are used to train the fuzzy systems in time and frequency domains. Second, after the off-line training, the ANFIS can generate a real-valued signal in a one-shot way with 8.9 dB of RCM reduction from the original real-valued signal, which involves a gain in the input power back off larger than 2.8 dB, an illumination-to-communication conversion efficiency gain of more than 35% and considerable improvements in bit error rate

Power Efficient VLC Transmitter Based on Pulse-Width Modulated DC-DC Converters and the Split of the Power

Visible Light Communication (VLC) has gained relevance during the last years. It consists in using High-Brightness LEDs (HB-LEDs) both for lighting and for transmitting information changing the light intensity rapidly. However, there are some bottlenecks that are slowing down the deployment of this technology. One of the most important problems is that the HB-LED drivers proposed for addressing high data rates in VLC achieve poor power efficiency. Since these HB-LED drivers must be able to reproduce fast current waveforms, the use of Linear Power Amplifiers (LPAs) has been adopted, which clearly damages the power efficiency of HB-LED lighting. In order to alleviate this problem, a HB-LED driver made up of two DC-DC power converters is presented in this work. One of them is responsible for performing the communication functionality by operating at high switching frequency (10 MHz), whereas the second converter fulfills the illumination functionality by ensuring a certain biasing point. The split of the power allows us to minimize the power delivered by the fast-response DC-DC power converter, which suffers from high switching losses. Thus, the overall efficiency can be maximized for each particular communication scenario and for scenarios with changing condition

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

Single carrier optical FDM in visible light communication

In this paper a comparison between a spiral and a strip shaped LED is presented in terms of the maximum link distance achievable in visible light based car to car communications (VLC-C2C). The transmitted data is recovered from the frame brightness of the video signal. The intensity modulated LED is captured from two scenarios, using a focused and unfocused camera. A data rate of 180 bps with the bit error rate performance below the FEC limit of 10-3 at a distance of 100 cm is successfully achieved, sufficient for transmitting road safety messages for VLC-C2C. It is shown that under the same conditions, the strip LED can effectively recover the data from a greater distance than its spiral counterpart