Organic Visible Light Communications: Methods to Achieve 10 Mb/s

In this review, we summarise methods towards achieving 10 Mb/s connectivity for visible light communications links utilising organic polymer based light-emitting diodes as the transmitter. We present two different methods; on-off keying supported by least mean squares equalisation and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing without equalisation

A Head/Taillight Featuring Hybrid Planar Visible Light Communications/Millimetre Wave Antenna for Vehicular Communications

With the emergence of the fifth generation and beyond mobile networks, both visible light communications (VLC) and radio frequency (RF) or millimetre wave (mmW) systems are expected to maintain the connectivity in various environments. In outdoor environments the link (VLC or RF) availability is paramount, which is affected by channel conditions. In particular, in vehicular communications other vehicles, harsh environment, and road geometry and structure will have the impact on the link connectivity and availability. In such cases, a front-end antenna solution, which benefits both optical and RF communication links, can be seen as an attractive option that can be fitted in future vehicles. In this paper, we present the design and practical implementation of a planar hybrid VLC/mmW antenna operating at 20.8 GHz and show measured results for characterization of RF and VLC links as well as communications performance. We have used the widely adopted on-off keying and quadrature amplitude modulation schemes with different orders to demonstrate data rates of 5 Mb/s and up to 100 Mb/s for the VLC and mmW links, respectively. By measuring the bit error rate and the error vector magnitude for VLC and Rf links, respectively for each modulation we have shown that the proposed hybrid planar antenna is suitable for example in a typical vehicle -to-vehicle communications

Experimental measurements of a joint 5G-VLC communication for future vehicular networks

One of the main revolutionary features of 5G networks is the ultra-low latency that will enable new services such as those for the future smart vehicles. The 5G technology will be able to support extreme-low latency. Thanks to new technologies and the wide flexible architecture that integrates new spectra and access technologies. In particular, Visible Light Communication (VLC) is envisaged as a very promising technology for vehicular communications, since the information can flow by using the lights (as traffic-lights and car lights). This paper describes one of the first experiments on the joint use of 5G and VLC networks to provide real-time information to cars. The applications span from road safety to emergency alarm

Transmission Line Synthesis Approach to Extending the Bandwidth of LEDs for Visible Light Communication

This paper proposes, for the first time, a transmission line synthesis approach to extending the bandwidth of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in the context of high capacity visible light communications links. As opposed to the more traditional pre-distortion, amplitude equalisation or driver circuitry based approaches, the extension in bandwidth is achieved by incorporating the LED diffusion capacitance into a pseudo-artificial transmission line (p-ATL) cell with significantly improved transmission and cut-off properties. With the proposed technique, we show the possibility of achieving close to 400% improvement in bandwidth with studies based on a verified LED equivalent model. It is envisaged that the proposed approach will enable bespoke driver circuits based on the individual characteristics of LEDs, while combination with existing bandwidth extension schemes can lead to further improvement

Performance Analysis of 8-bit ODACs for VLC Applications

A discrete optical power level stepping technique in visible light communication (VLC), also known, as an optical digital to analog conversion (ODAC) has been proposed. This is an alternative concept for VLC front-end design, able to mitigate the LED intrinsic non-linearity. Additionally, it removes the need of an electrical digital to analog conversion (EDAC) in the driver stage. This paper provides an experimental evaluation of two different ODAC front-ends. The results investigate the spatial relation between the optical front-end and the optical receiver. In addition, the performance evaluation employs dynamic test metrics rather than conventional static metrics previously reported in the literature

Analyzing Interface Bonding Schemes for VLC with Mobility and Shadowing

Node mobility and shadowing are the most common reasons requiring a handover in vehicular visible light communications (VVLC). In order to provide seamless mobility during the handover, it is required to decrease the network outage duration. This paper aims to improve the outage duration in handover caused by mobility and shadow for VLC networks. We analyze interface bonding schemes using two different primary interface reselection methods. The results show that using "failure"interface selection method instead of "always"method reduces the VLC handover outage duration by 62% and 44% in bonding schemes for transmission control protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP) network traffic, respectively

Vector Coding Optical Wireless Links

The quasi-static nature of the optical wireless channel means that the channel state information (CSI) can be readily available at the transmitter and receiver prior to data transmission. This implies that electrically band-limited optical wireless communication (OWC) systems can make use of optimal channel partitioning or vector coding based multi-channel modulation (MCM) to achieve high throughput by mitigating the non-linearities arising from the optical and electrical channel. This paper proposes a pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) based DC-biased optical vector coding (DCO-VC) MCM scheme for OWC. The throughput performance of DCO-VC is evaluated and compared to the well known DC-biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) over hybrid (line-of-sight and diffuse) and diffuse (non line-of-sight only) visible light communication (VLC) channels with additive white Gaussian noise. For the completeness of the VLC physical layer, the performance comparison is based on an uncoded and a forward error correction transmission mode using well-known convolutional codes with Viterbi decoder. The results show that the coded DCO-VC outperforms DCO-OFDM system by achieving up to 2 and 3 dB signal to noise ratio gains over hybrid and diffuse VLC channels, respectively

Dynamic Multiple Access Configuration in Intelligent LiFi Attocellular Access Points

The exponential growth in the global demand for wireless connectivity calls for efficient and reliable management of the available wireless resources. Light fidelity (LiFi) harnesses the vast untapped wireless transmission resources in the infrared spectrum and visible light spectrum to create ultra-dense wireless networks which support user mobility, multiuser access, and handover. Various multiuser access (MA) protocols have been developed to meet the varying system requirements, including orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes. While NOMA, on the one hand, allows for significant enhancement in the achievable data rates, its performance may be severely degraded under particular conditions such as a large number of connected users or users existing in highly symmetrical locations. OMA, on the other hand, provides better link reliability in such scenarios but at the expense of decreased spectral efficiency. Therefore, there is a need to enable a degree of intelligence in the LiFi access point (AP) to facilitate real-time configuration of the MA protocol. To this end, this paper develops a novel cross-layer design framework for dynamic multiple access selections (DMAS) in intelligent LiFi APs. The developed framework runs at LiFi attocell system level and can be configured to cater for various system requirements in terms of sum data rate, average outage probability, and fairness. The obtained results show that DMAS introduces an effective solution for multiuser resource allocation by achieving better satisfaction of the system requirements compared to the static configuration of a single MA scheme