Channel capacity bounds are derived for a point-to-point indoor visible light communications (VLC) system with signal-dependent Gaussian noise. Considering both illumination and communication, the non-negative input of VLC is constrained by peak and average optical intensity constraints. Two scenarios are taken into account: one scenario has both average and peak optical intensity constraints, and the other scenario has only average optical intensity constraint. For both two scenarios, we derive closed-from expressions of capacity lower and upper bounds. Specifically, the capacity lower bound is derived by using the variational method and the property that the output entropy is invariably larger than the input entropy. The capacity upper bound is obtained by utilizing the dual expression of capacity and the principle of "capacity-achieving source distributions that escape to infinity". Moreover, the asymptotic analysis shows that the asymptotic performance gap between the capacity lower and upper bounds approaches zero. Finally, all derived capacity bounds are confirmed using numerical results.
Visible Light Communication (VLC) technology using light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been gaining increasing attention in recent years as it is appealing for a wide range of applications such as indoor positioning. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been applied to indoor wireless optical communications in order to mitigate the effect of multipath distortion of the optical channel as well as increasing data rate. In this paper, we investigate the indoor positioning accuracy of optical based OFDM techniques used in VLC systems. A positioning algorithm based on power attenuatio…
Visible light communications (VLC) that use the infrastructure of the indoor illumination system have been envisioned as a compact, safe, and green alternative to WiFi for the downlink of an indoor wireless mobile communication system. Although the optical spectrum is typically well-suited to high throughput applications, combining communications with indoor lighting in a commercially viable system imposes severe limitations both in bandwidth and received power. Clever techniques are needed to achieve Gb/s transmission, and to do it in a cost effective manner so as to successfully compete with…
Visible light communication (VLC) using light-emitting-diodes (LEDs) has been a popular research area recently. VLC can provide a practical solution for indoor positioning. In this paper, the impact of multipath reflections on indoor VLC positioning is investigated, considering a complex indoor environment with walls, floor and ceiling. For the proposed positioning system, an LED bulb is the transmitter and a photo-diode (PD) is the receiver to detect received signal strength (RSS) information. Combined deterministic and modified Monte Carlo (CDMMC) method is applied to compute the impulse res…
This paper presents an approach for visible light communication-based indoor positioning using compressed sensing. We consider a large number of light emitting diodes (LEDs) simultaneously transmitting their positional information and a user device equipped with a photo-diode. By casting the LED signal separation problem into an equivalent compressed sensing framework, the user device is able to detect the set of nearby LEDs using sparse signal recovery algorithms. From this set, and using proximity method, position estimation is proposed based on the concept that if signal separation is possi…
In this paper, we investigate and compare the performance of single- and multi-carrier modulation schemes for indoor visible light communication (VLC). Particularly, the performances of single carrier frequency domain equalization (SCFDE), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and on-off keying (OOK) with minimum mean square error equalization (MMSE) are analyzed in order to mitigate the effect of multipath distortion of the indoor optical channel where nonlinearity distortion of light emitting diode (LED) transfer function is taken into account. Our results indicate that SCFDE sys…
In this paper, the spectral efficiency of permutation modulation-based multiple input multiple output (MIMO) visible light communication is improved using systematically designed, multiweight codeword matrices. Soft-decision, low-complexity detection schemes are then designed for the receiver and compared with the maximum likelihood (ML) detection method. Bit error rate (BER) results show the soft-decision detection algorithm is able to decode the transmitted information without knowledge of the channel state information. This enables the mobile receiver decode information while within the fie…
Interconnecting devices in an indoor environment using the illumination system and white light emitting diodes (LED) requires adaptive networking techniques that can provide network access for multiple users. Two techniques based on multilevel signaling and optical orthogonal codes (OOC) are explored in this paper in order to provide simultaneous multiple access in an indoor multiuser network. Balanced incomplete block designs (BIBD) are used to construct multilevel symbols for M-ary signaling. Using these multilevel symbols we are able to control the optical peak to average power ratio (PAPR)…
This paper investigates the physical-layer security for an indoor visible light communication (VLC) network consisting of a transmitter, a legitimate receiver and an eavesdropper. Both the main channel and the wiretapping channel have nonnegative inputs, which are corrupted by additive white Gaussian noises. Considering the illumination requirement and the physical characteristics of lighting source, the input is also constrained in both its average and peak optical intensities. Two scenarios are investigated: one is only with an average optical intensity constraint, and the other is with both…
In this paper, we investigate the performance of generalized spatial modulation (GSM) in indoor wireless visible light communication (VLC) systems. GSM uses $N_t$ light emitting diodes (LED), but activates only $N_a$ of them at a given time. Spatial modulation and spatial multiplexing are special cases of GSM with $N_{a}=1$ and $N_{a}=N_t$, respectively. We first derive an analytical upper bound on the bit error rate (BER) for maximum likelihood (ML) detection of GSM in VLC systems. Analysis and simulation results show that the derived upper bound is very tight at medium to high signal-to-nois…
Visible Light Communication is the emerging field in the area of Indoor Optical Wireless Communication which uses white light LEDs for transmitting data and light simultaneously. LEDs can be modulated at very high speeds which increases its efficiency and enabling it for the dual purposes of data communication and illumination simultaneously. Radio Frequency have some limitations which is not at par with the current demand of bandwidth but using visible light, it is possible to achieve higher data rates per user. In this paper, we discuss some challenges, potentials and possible future applica…
Visible light communication (VLC), which uses LEDs for both illumination and communication purposes, has recently emerged as either an alternative or a support system for radio frequency (RF) communication. VLC channel inside a room is highly variable since it is pretty much depends on optical line of sight (LOS) and field of view (FOV) and it causes the received signal to vary dramatically. Therefore, to achieve spectral efficient communication, using rate adaptation methods are essential. In this study, we propose a rateless codes based rate adaptation method which adjusts transmission rate …
Visible light communication (VLC) has been recognized as a promising technology for handling the continuously increasing quality of service and connectivity requirements in modern wireless communications, particularly in indoor scenarios. In this context, the present work considers the integration of two distinct modulation schemes, namely spatial modulation (SM) with space time block codes (STBCs), aiming at improving the overall VLC system reliability. Based on this and in order to further enhance the achievable transmission data rate, we integrate quasi-orthogonal STBC (QOSTBC) with SM, sin…
In this paper, we investigate the physical-layer security for a spatial modulation (SM) based indoor visible light communication (VLC) system, which includes multiple transmitters, a legitimate receiver, and a passive eavesdropper (Eve). At the transmitters, the SM scheme is employed, i.e., only one transmitter is active at each time instant. To choose the active transmitter, a uniform selection (US) scheme is utilized. Two scenarios are considered: one is with non-negativity and average optical intensity constraints, the other is with non-negativity, average optical intensity and peak optical…
We experimentally demonstrate a software-defined 2x2 MIMO VLC system employing link adaptation of spatial multiplexing and diversity. The average error-free spectral efficiency of 12 b/s/Hz is achieved over 2 meters indoor transmission after an obstruction.
The main challenge in visible light communications (VLC) is the low modulation bandwidth of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). This forms a barrier towards achieving high data rates. Moreover, the implementation of high order modulation schemes is restricted by the requirements of intensity modulation (IM) and direct detection (DD), which demand the use of real unipolar signals. In this paper, we propose a novel amplitude, phase and quadrant (APQ) modulation scheme that fits into the IM/DD restrictions in VLC systems. The proposed scheme decomposes the complex and bipolar symbols of high order modu…
Visible Light Communication (VLC) using light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been gaining increasing attention in recent years as it is appealing for a wide range of applications such as indoor positioning. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been applied to indoor wireless optical communications in order to mitigate the effect of multipath distortion of the optical channel as well as increasing data rate. In this paper, a novel OFDM VLC system is proposed which can be utilized for both communications and indoor positioning. A positioning algorithm based on power attenuation is u…
In this paper, we introduce a new uplink visible light indoor positioning system that estimates the position of the users in the network-side of a visible light communications (VLC) system. This technique takes advantage of the diffuse components of the uplink channel impulse response for positioning, which has been considered as a destructive noise in existing visible light communication positioning literature. Exploiting the line of sight (LOS) component, the most significant diffusive component of the channel (the second power peak (SPP)), and the delay time between LOS and SPP, we present …
We propose an indoor localization algorithm for visible light systems by considering effects of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation. The proposed algorithm, named database assisted nonlinear least squares (DA-NLS), utilizes ideas from both the classical NLS algorithm and the fingerprinting algorithm to achieve accurate and robust localization performance in NLOS environments. In particular, a database is used to learn NLOS effects, and then an NLS algorithm is employed to estimate the position. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared against that of the fingerprinting and NLS al…
The ever-increasing demand of mobile Internet and multimedia services poses unique and significant challenges for current and future generation wireless networks. These challenges are mainly relating to the support of massive ubiquitous connectivity, low latency and highly efficient utilization of spectrum resources. Therefore, it is vital to consider them extensively prior to design and deployment of future wireless networks. To this end, the present article provides a comprehensive overview of a particularly promising and effective wireless technology, namely, visible light communication (VL…
In physical-layer security, one of the most fundamental issues is the secrecy capacity. The objective of this paper is to determine the secrecy capacity for an indoor visible light communication system consisting of a transmitter, a legitimate receiver and an eavesdropping receiver. In such a system, both signal-independent and signal-dependent Gaussian noises are considered. Under non-negativity and average optical intensity constraints, lower and upper secrecy capacity bounds are first derived by the variational method, the dual expression of the secrecy capacity, and the concept of "the opt…
Visible light communications (VLC) have been recently proposed as a promising and efficient solution to indoor ubiquitous broadband connectivity. In this paper, non-orthogonal multiple access, which has been recently proposed as an effective scheme for fifth generation (5G) wireless networks, is considered in the context of VLC systems, under different channel uncertainty models. To this end, we first derive a novel closed-form expression for the bit-error-rate (BER) under perfect channel state information (CSI). Capitalizing on this, we quantify the effect of noisy and outdated CSI by derivin…
Visible light communication (VLC) systems are promising candidates for future indoor access and peer-to-peer networks. The performance of these systems, however, is vulnerable to the line of sight (LOS) link blockage due to objects inside the room. In this paper, we develop a probabilistic object detection method that takes advantage of the blockage status of the LOS links between the user devices and transceivers on the ceiling to locate those objects. The target objects are modeled as cylinders with random radii. The location and size of an object can be estimated by using a quadratic progra…
Visible light communication (VLC) backscatter has been proposed as a wireless access option for Internet of Things (IoT). However, the throughput of the state-of-the-art VLC backscatter is limited by simple single-carrier pulsed modulation scheme, such as on-off keying (OOK). In this paper, a novel pixelated VLC backscatter is proposed and implemented to overcome the channel capacity limitation. In particular, multiple smaller VLC backscatters, switching on or off, are integrated to generate multi-level signals, which enables the usage of more advanced modulation schemes than OOK. Based on exp…
In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate a real-time software defined multiple input multiple output (MIMO) visible light communication (VLC) system employing link adaptation of spatial multiplexing and spatial diversity. Real-time MIMO signal processing is implemented by using the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) devices. Software defined implantation of MIMO VLC can assist in enabling an adaptive and reconfigurable communication system without hardware changes. We measured the error vector magnitude (EVM), bit error rate (BER) and spec…
Visible light communication (VLC) systems using the indoor lighting system to also provide downlink communications require high average optical powers in order to satisfy the illumination needs. This can cause high amplitude signals common in higher-order modulation schemes to be clipped by the peak power constraint of the light emitting diode (LED) and lead to high signal distortion. In this paper we introduce Hadamard coded modulation (HCM) to achieve low error probabilities in LED-based VLC systems needing high average optical powers. This technique uses a fast Walsh-Hadamard transform (FWH…
Light emitting diode (LED) based visible light positioning (VLP) networks can provide accurate location information in indoor environments. In this manuscript, we propose to employ cooperative localization for visible light networks by designing a VLP system configuration that involves multiple LED transmitters with known locations (e.g., on the ceiling) and visible light communication (VLC) units equipped with both LEDs and photodetectors (PDs) for the purpose of cooperation. First, we derive the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) for the localization of …
Predictions for wireless and mobile Internet access suggest exponential traffic increase particularly in inbuilding environments. Non-traditional actors such as facility owners have a growing interest in deploying and operating their own indoor networks to fulfill the capacity demand. Such local operators will need spectrum sharing with neighboring networks because they are not likely to have their own dedicated spectrum. Management of inter-network interference then becomes a key issue for high capacity provision. Tight operator-wise cooperation provides superior performance, but at the expen…
Future mobile networks are supposed to serve high data rates required by users. To accommodate the high data rates, a direct communication between nearby mobile terminals (MTs), known as Device-to-device (D2D) communication, can be exploited. Furthermore, a communication in high frequency bands, such as, visible light communication (VLC), is also foreseen as an enabler for the high data rates. In conventional D2D communication, pairs of the MTs should reuse the same frequencies to keep a high spectral efficiency of the system. However, this implies either interference among the D2D pairs or ut…
Visible light positioning (VLP) has drawn plenty of attention as a promising indoor positioning technique. However, in nonstationary environments, the performance of VLP is limited because of the highly time-varying channels. To improve the positioning accuracy and generalization capability in nonstationary environments, a cooperative VLP scheme based on federated learning (FL) is proposed in this paper. Exploiting the FL framework, a global model adaptive to environmental changes can be jointly trained by users without sharing private data of users. Moreover, a Cooperative Visible-light Posit…
This paper presents an analysis of the asymmetric relaying system which provides communication between hybrid outdoor sub-system and indoor visible light communications (VLC) access points. The outdoor sub-system represents a hybrid radio-frequency (RF)/free-space optical (FSO) system, introduced to reduce the impact of weather conditions on transmission quality. Closed-form outage probability analytical expression is derived. Numerical results are presented and confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations. The effects of system and channel parameters on the outage probability performance are investig…
The ever-increasing demand for high data-rate applications and the proliferation of connected devices pose several theoretical and technological challenges for the fifth generation (5G) networks and beyond. Among others, this includes the spectrum scarcity and massive connectivity of devices, particularly in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. In this respect, visible light communication (VLC) has recently emerged as a potential solution for these challenges, particularly in scenarios relating to indoor communications. Additionally, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for …
Adaptive Lighting Control in Visible Light Systems: An Integrated Sensing, Communication, and Illumination Framework
Fiber Optics Research Center, College of Smart Materials and Future Energy, Fudan University（复旦大学智能材料与未来能源学院光纤研究中心）；School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳）理学院）
The proliferation of connected devices and emergence of internet-of-everything represent a major challenge for broadband wireless networks. This requires a paradigm shift towards the development of innovative technologies for next generation wireless systems. One of the key challenges is the scarcity of spectrum, owing to the unprecedented broadband penetration rate in recent years. A promising solution is the proposal of visible light communications (VLC), which explores the unregulated visible light spectrum to enable high-speed communications, in addition to efficient lighting. This solutio…
