In this paper, an improved channel model of visible light communication (VLC) for ranging in presented. For indoor channel model of VLC, distance is estimated based on received signal strength. In this model, received shot noise as a distance-dependent parameter is considered in range estimation accuracy. Moreover, based on this model, the Cramer-Rao lower bound is computed as the theoretical limits on the performance and accuracy of any unbiased estimator. In this way, the effects of horizontal and vertical distances are investigated. In addition, the transmitted power effect on RSN and accordingly on CRLB is demonstrated.
In this paper, a high coverage algorithm termed enhanced camera assisted received signal strength ratio (eCA-RSSR) positioning algorithm is proposed for visible light positioning (VLP) systems. The basic idea of eCA-RSSR is to utilize visual information captured by the camera to estimate the incidence angles of visible lights first. Based on the incidence angles, eCA-RSSR utilizes the received signal strength ratio (RSSR) calculated by the photodiode (PD) to estimate the ratios of the distances between the LEDs and the receiver. Based on an Euclidean plane geometry theorem, eCA-RSSR transforms…
Reconfigurable Smart Surface (RSS) is assumed to be a key enabler for future wireless communication systems due to its ability to control the wireless propagation environment and, thus, enhance communications quality. Although optimal and continuous phase-shift configuration can be analytically obtained, practical RSS systems are prone to both channel estimation errors, discrete control, and curse of dimensionality. This leads to relaying on a finite number of phase-shift configurations that is expected to degrade the system's performances. In this paper, we tackle the problem of quantized RSS…
Communication-efficient Coordinated RSS-based Distributed Passive Localization via Drone Cluster
Nanjing University of Science and Technology（南京理工大学）；Research Institute, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation（中国航天科工集团第八五一一研究所）；Beijing Aerospace Automatic Control Institute（北京航天自动控制研究所）；National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Aerospace Intelligence Control（航空航天智能控制科学与技术国家级重点实验室）；Hainan University（海南大学）；University of Kent（肯特大学）
Non-terrestrial networks, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) and Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites, are expected to have a pivotal role in the sixth generation wireless networks. With their inherent features such as flexible placement, wide footprint, and preferred channel conditions, they can tackle several challenges in current terrestrial networks However, their successful and widespread adoption relies on energy-efficient on-board communication systems. In this context, the integration of Reconfigurable Smart Surfaces (RSS) into aerial platfo…
Physical-layer security (PLS) has the potential to strongly enhance the overall system security as an alternative to or in combination with conventional cryptographic primitives usually implemented at higher network layers. Secret-key generation relying on wireless channel reciprocity is an interesting solution as it can be efficiently implemented at the physical layer of emerging wireless communication networks, while providing information-theoretic security guarantees. In this paper, we investigate and compare the secret-key capacity based on the sampling of the entire complex channel state …
Aerial platforms are expected to deliver enhanced and seamless connectivity in the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks and beyond (B5G). This is generally achievable by supporting advanced onboard communication features embedded in heavy and energy-intensive equipment. Alternatively, reconfigurable smart surfaces (RSS), which smartly exploit/recycle signal reflections in the environment, are increasingly being recognized as a new wireless communication paradigm to improve communication links. In fact, their reduced cost, low power use, light weight, and flexible deployment make them an att…
Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a current technology which allows data to be transmitted by modulating information onto a light source. It has many advantages over traditional radio frequency communication and up to 10,000 times larger bandwidth. Existing research in visible light communication assumes a synchronised channel, however, this is not always easily achieved. In this paper, a novel synchronised intra and inter-vehicle VLC system is proposed to ensure reliable communication in both inter and intra-vehicle communication for Infotainment Systems (IS). The protocol achieves synchro…
Providing uplink high data rate is one of the big concerns in visible light communication (VLC) systems. This paper introduces an uplink VLC system based on an infrared transmitter with beam steering to provide high data rates. In this work, a 4 branches angle diversity receiver (ADR) is used and the resultant delay spread and SNR are examined. The proposed system achieved data rates up to 3.57 Gb/s using simple on-off-keying (OOK).
Advancements in lighting systems and photodetectors provide opportunities to develop viable alternatives to conventional communication and sensing technologies, especially in the vehicular industry. Most of the studies that propose visible light in communication or sensing adopt the Lambertian propagation (path loss) model. This model requires knowledge and utilization of multiple parameters to calculate the path loss such as photodetector area, incidence angle, and distance between transmitter and receiver. In this letter, a simplified path loss model that is mathematically more tractable is …
In this communication revolution era, visible light communication (VLC) is the optimum efficacious answer to the increased request for high-speed data transmission with reduced cost, besides the illumination. This technology is considered the best promising candidate for indoor positioning due to its ability to attain higher positioning accuracy than other technologies, alongside its distinct advantages. However, the existing techniques that had been applied in an indoor positioning system (IPS) based on VLC focused on the aspect of accuracy but neglected the aspects of cost and complexity. Th…
The path-loss exponent (PLE) is one of the most crucial parameters in wireless communications to characterize the propagation of fading channels. It is currently adopted for many different kinds of wireless network problems such as power consumption issues, modelling the communication environment, and received signal strength (RSS)-based localization. PLE estimation is thus of great use to assist in wireless networking. However, a majority of methods to estimate the PLE require either some particular information of the wireless network, which might be unknown or some external auxiliary devices…
Sparse code multiple access (SCMA), as a code-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme, has received considerable research attention for enabling massive connectivity in future wireless communication systems. In this paper, we present a novel codebook (CB) design for SCMA based visible light communication (VLC) system, which suffers from shot noise. In particular, we introduce an iterative algorithm for designing and optimizing CB by considering the impact of shot noise at the VLC receiver. Based on the proposed CB, we derive and analyze the theoretical bit error rate (BER) expressi…
Visible light communication (VLC) builds upon the dual use of existing lighting infrastructure for wireless data transmission. VLC has recently gained interest as cost-effective, secure, and energy-efficient wireless access technology particularly for indoor user-dense environments. While initial studies in this area are mainly limited to single-user point-to-point links, more recent efforts have focused on multi-user VLC systems in an effort to transform VLC into a scalable and fully networked wireless technology. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of multi-user VLC systems di…
This paper proposes a novel power-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) placement algorithm for indoor visible light communication (VLC). In the considered model, the LEDs can be designedly placed for high power efficiency while satisfying the indoor communication and illumination requirements. This design problem is formulated as a power minimization problem under both communication and illumination level constraints. Due to the interactions among LEDs and the illumination uniformity constraint, the formulated problem is complex and non-convex. To solve the problem, we first transform the comp…
Visible light communication (VLC) is an emerging technique that uses light-emitting diodes (LED) to combine communication and illumination. It is considered as a promising scheme for indoor wireless communication that can be deployed at reduced costs while offering high data rate performance. In this paper, we focus on the design of the downlink of a multi-user VLC system. Inherent to multi-user systems is the interference caused by the broadcast nature of the medium. Linear precoding based schemes are among the most popular solutions that have recently been proposed to mitigate inter-user int…
Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is attracting significant research interests currently, which is considered as a promising multiple access technique for 5G systems. It serves as a good candidate for the future communication network with massive nodes due to its capability of handling user overloading. Introducing SCMA to visible light communication (VLC) can provide another opportunity on design of transmission protocols for the communication network with massive nodes due to the limited communication range of VLC, which reduces the interference intensity. However, when applying SCMA in VLC…
This paper presents a comprehensive performance analysis of an integrated indoor power line communication (PLC)/visible light communication (VLC) system with the presence of a decode-and-forward (DF) relay. The existing indoor power line networks are used as the backbone for VLCs. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated in terms of the average capacity and the outage probability. A new unified mathematical method is developed for the PLC/VLC system and analytical expressions for the aforementioned performance metrics are derived. Monte Carlo simulations are provided throughout the …
In this treatise, we provide an interdisciplinary survey on spatial modulation (SM), where multiple-input multiple-output microwave and visible light, as well as single and multicarrier communications are considered. Specifically, we first review the permutation modulation (PM) concept, which was originally proposed by Slepian in 1965. The PM concept has been applied to a wide range of applications, including wired and wireless communications and data storage. By introducing a three-dimensional signal representation, which consists of spatial, temporal and frequency axes, the hybrid PM concept…
The directionality of optical signals provides an opportunity for efficient space reuse of optical links in visible light communication (VLC). Space reuse in VLC can enable multiple access communication from multiple light emitting transmitters. However, traditional VLC system design using photo-receptors requires at least one receiving photodetector element for each light emitter, thus constraining VLC to always require a light emitter-to-light receiving element pair. In this paper, we propose, design and evaluate a novel architecture for VLC that can enable multiple-access reception using a …
The visible light communication (VLC) technology has attracted much attention in the research of the sixth generation (6G) communication systems. In this paper, a novel three dimensional (3D) space-time-frequency non-stationary geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) is proposed for indoor VLC channels. The proposed VLC GBSM can capture unique indoor VLC channel characteristics such as the space-time-frequency non-stationarity caused by large light-emitting diode (LED) arrays in indoor scenarios, long travelling paths, and large bandwidths of visible light waves, respectively. In addition, the …
The potential of using visible light communication (VLC) technologies for vehicular communication networks has recently attracted much attention. The underlying VLC channels, as a foundation for the proper design and optimization of vehicular VLC communication systems, have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Vehicular VLC link impairments can have a significant impact on the system performance and capacity. Such impairments include the optical wireless channel distortion and background noise. This paper proposes a novel three-dimensional (3D) regular-shaped geometry-based stochastic model…
Photovoltaic (PV) modules have been employed in visible light communication (VLC) for simultaneous energy harvesting and data reception. A PV-based receiver features easy optical alignment and self-powered operation. It is commonly assumed that PV modules in VLC have a linear optical-electrical response, which is generally true under high illumination levels. This paper will illustrate the exacerbated PV's nonlinear distortion when under typical indoor illumination. The nonlinearity of a PV module for different numbers of PV cells is also characterized. We investigated the transmission perform…
Reliable data transmissions and offering better mobility to the end user can be achieved by integrating different communication systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of a cascaded indoor power line communication (PLC)/visible light communication (VLC) system with the presence of an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. Using the pre-installed infrastructure of electricity wiring networks gives the advantage to use PLC as a backbone for VLCs. The performance of the proposed hybrid system is discussed in terms of the average capacity. A mathematical method is developed for this networ…
Visible light positioning (VLP) is an accurate indoor positioning technology that uses luminaires as transmitters. In particular, circular luminaires are a common source type for VLP, that are typically treated only as point sources for positioning, while ignoring their geometry characteristics. In this paper, the arc feature of the circular luminaire and the coordinate information obtained via visible light communication (VLC) are jointly used for VLC-enabled indoor positioning, and a novel perspective arcs approach is proposed. The proposed approach does not rely on any inertial measurement …
Visible light communication (VLC) is an emerging technology that enables broadband data rates using the visible spectrum. In this paper, considering slow beam steering where VLC beam directions are assumed to be fixed during a transmission frame, we find the steering angles that simultaneously serve multiple users within the frame duration and maximize the data rates. This is achieved by solving a non-convex optimization problem using a grid-based search and majorization-minimization (MM) procedure. Subsequently, we consider multiple steerable beams with a larger number of users in the network…
In this paper, we propose joint beamforming and photo-detector (PD) orientation (BO) optimization schemes for mobile visible light communication (VLC) with the orientation adjustable receiver (OAR). Since VLC is sensitive to line-of-sight propagation, we first establish the OAR model and the human body blockage model for mobile VLC user equipment (UE). To guarantee the quality of service (QoS) of mobile VLC, we jointly optimize BO with minimal UE the power consumption for both fixed and random UE orientation cases. For the fixed UE orientation case, since the {transmit} beamforming and the PD …
This paper looks at the performance of an outdoor visible light (OVLC) communication system used for Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV). In the proposed system an amplify-and-forward (AF) opportunistic scheme is used to extend the range of information broadcast from a traffic light to vehicles. The Gamma-Gamma channel gain and the Lambertian direct current (DC) channel gain are used to model the fading coefficient of each transmission and the short and thermal noise models used to represent the system noise. The statistics of the system are examined by deriving closed-form expressions for the cumulati…
This paper presents an indoor visible light communication (VLC) system in conjunction with an imaging receiver with parallel data transmission (spatial multiplexing) to decrease the effects of inter-symbol interference (ISI). To distinguish between light units (transmitters) and to match the light units used to convey the data with the pixels of the imaging receiver, we propose the use of subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) tones. Each light unit transmission is multiplexed with a unique tone. At the receiver, a SCM tone decision system is utilized to measure the power level of each SCM tone and con…
A visible light communication (VLC) system can adopt multi-color light emitting diode (LED) arrays to support multiple users. In this paper, a multi-layer coding and constrained partial group decoding (CPGD) method is proposed to tackle strong color interference and increase the system throughput. After channel model formulation, user information rates are allocated and decoding order for all the received data layers is obtained by solving a max-min fairness problem using a greedy algorithm. An achievable rate is derived under the truncated Gaussian input distribution. To reduce the decoding c…
For dynamic visible light communication (VLC) systems, received optical power fluctuates largely due to the fast movement of VLC terminals. Such fluctuations will cause possible signal clipping and quantization noise at the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and thus aggravate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reliability of the communication link. To mitigate this effect, the automatic gain control (AGC) technique is often introduced in the receiver front-end to adaptively adjust the electrical signal strength. In this paper, we provided a VLC front-end analysis considering AGC model. Based on…
Channel polarization and Polar code are widely considered as major breakthroughs in coding theory because they have shown promising features for future wireless standards. The main drawbacks of Polar code are high-latency in decoding hardware, and unimpressive error-correction performance in case limited code-length is implemented. These two disadvantages limit implementation of Polar code in low-throughput wireless communication systems. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity low-latency hardware architecture for the soft-decision compact (16,11) Systematic Successive Cancellation Polar D…
In the context of an increasing interest toward reducing the number of traffic accidents and of associated victims, communication-based vehicle safety applications have emerged as one of the best solutions to enhance road safety. In this area, visible light communications (VLC) have a great potential for applications due to their relatively simple design for basic functioning, efficiency, and large geographical distribution. Vehicular Visible Light Communication (VVLC) is preferred as a vehicle to everything (V2X) communications scheme. Due to its highly secure, low complexity, and radio frequ…
In this paper, a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) visible light communication (VLC) system is investigated. The system uses angle diversity receivers (ADRs) to provide high data rates. The ADR has 4 branches, each directed to a different direction. An 8m x 4m sized room is modelled to study the resource allocation to users according to their channel conditions to maximize the data rate. The results show that using ADRs improves the data rate by an average of 35% compared to a system using wide FOV receivers.
In this letter, a novel run-length limited (RLL) code is reported. In addition to providing a strict DC-balance and other relevant features for visible light communication (VLC) applications, the proposed 5B10B code presents enhanced error correction capabilities. Theoretical and simulation results show that the proposed code outperforms its standard enforced counterparts in terms of bit error ratio while preserving low-complexity requirements.
Light can be used for wireless information transmission apart from illumination; that is the key idea behind visible-light communication (VLC), one of the disruptive technologies of our days. It combines remarkably high data rates due to ultrashort wavelengths with huge reliability and security due to small distances; nevertheless, it substantially suffers from interference of neighboring light sources in multiple-link configurations. In this manuscript, we investigate a pair of light emitting diodes (LEDs) interfering each other and propose a simple nanoslit metasurface that radically increas…
In this paper, an energy-efficient precoding scheme is designed for multi-user visible light communication (VLC) systems in the context of physical layer security, where users' messages are kept mutually confidential. The design problem is shown to be non-convex fractional programming, therefore Dinkelbach algorithm and convex-concave procedure (CCCP) based on the first-order Taylor approximation are utilized to tackle the problem. Numerical results are performed to show the convergence behaviors and the performance of the proposed solution for different parameter settings.
Cross-Technology Communication (CTC) is an emerging technology to support direct communication between wireless devices that follow different standards. In spite of the many different proposals from the community to enable CTC, the performance aspect of CTC is an equally important problem but has seldom been studied before. We find this problem is extremely challenging, due to the following reasons: on one hand, a link for CTC is essentially different from a conventional wireless link. The conventional link indicators like RSSI (received signal strength indicator) and SNR (signal to noise rati…
Visible light positioning has the potential to yield sub-centimeter accuracy in indoor environments, yet conventional received signal strength (RSS)-based localization algorithms cannot achieve this because their performance degrades from optical multipath reflection. However, this part of the optical received signal is deterministic due to the often static and predictable nature of the optical wireless channel. In this paper, the performance of optical channel impulse response (OCIR)-based localization is studied using an artificial neural network (ANN) to map embedded features of the OCIR to…
This paper analyses the statistics of the clipping noise in orthogonal frequency-division-multiplex (OFDM) based visible light Communication systems. The clipped signal is generally modelled as the summation of the scaled original signal and clipping noise, which is treated by the linear equalizer in the receiver. Generally, it is assumed that the clipped and original signal share the same statistics. Although valid in some cases, we show that such assumption is invalid when the transmitter is tightly constrained. We derive closed-form probability distribution function (pdf) for the clipping n…
Visible light communications (VLC) is an emerging field in technology and research. Estimating the channel taps is a major requirement for designing reliable communication systems. Due to the nonlinear characteristics of the VLC channel those parameters cannot be derived easily. They can be calculated by means of software simulation. In this work, a novel methodology is proposed for the prediction of channel parameters using neural networks. Measurements conducted in a controlled experimental setup are used to train neural networks for channel tap prediction. Our experiment results indicate th…
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) in the power-domain has been recognized as a promising technique to overcome the bandwidth limitations of current visible light communication (VLC) systems. In this letter, we investigate the power allocation (PA) problem in an NOMA-VLC system under high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) regime. A simple fair power allocation strategy (SFPA) is proposed to ensure equitable allocation of transmission resources in a multi-user scenario. SFPA requires minimal channel state information (CSI), making it less prone to channel estimation errors. Results show that NOMA …
This article describes the implementation of a prototype visible light communications system based on the IEEE 802.15.7 standard using low-cost commercial off-the-shelf analog devices. The aim of this article is to show that this standard provides a framework that could promote the introduction of applications into the market. Thus, these specifications could be further developed, reducing the gap between the industry and research communities. The implemented prototype makes use of software defined radio platforms to interface between the analog devices and the computer where the signal proces…
In this paper the secure performance for the visible light communication (VLC) system with multiple eavesdroppers is studied. By considering the practical amplitude constraint instead of an average power constraint in the VLC system, the closed-form expressions for the upper and the lower bounds of the secrecy outage probability and the average secrecy capacity are derived. Since the locations for both legitimate receiver and eavesdroppers are unknown as well as random, the stochastic geometry method is introduced for problem formulation. Moreover, accurate expressions with a low computational…
The visible light communication (VLC) by LED is one of the important communication methods because LED can work as high speed and VLC sends the information by high flushing LED. We use the pulse wave modulation for the VLC with LED because LED can be controlled easily by the microcontroller, which has the digital output pins. At the pulse wave modulation, deciding the high and low voltage by the middle voltage when the receiving signal level is amplified is equal to deciding it by the threshold voltage without amplification. In this paper, we proposed two methods that adjust the threshold valu…
Visible Light Communication (VLC) is seen as a complementary wireless technology to Radio Frequency (RF). However, VLC is very sensitive to the signal blockage and suffers from shadowing due to the high directionality of the optical channel. Hence there is a big interest in researching novel approaches for VLC like usage of multiple antenna techniques providing spatial diversity which can be exploited as a way to combat signal blockage and fading. We present a complete and low-cost MIMO-VLC transceiver system consisting of COTS components. In particular, we show that COTS 802.11n (WiFi) device…
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…
