Power Consumption Efficiency Evaluation of Multi-User Full-Duplex Visible Light Communication Systems for Smart Home Technologies

Visible light communication (VLC) is regarded as a promising technology for indoor communications due to its safety, availability, and efficiency. By deploying multiple light-emitting diodes (LEDs) at the transmitter, high data rate can be achieved. On the other hand, the dimming control is necessary in VLC systems to meet the lighting requirements, and puts an additional constraint to the system design. Thus, providing required communication quality while preserving the maximum dimming control capability becomes the baseline design philosophy for VLC systems. In this paper, we focus on multi-user multiple-input multiple-output VLC systems and propose a joint beamforming and direct current bias design. The proposed scheme can be formulated as an optimization problem and finds the minimum dimming level subject to the transmission rate requirement as well as the lighting constraints. Semi-definite program method and concave-convex procedure are exploited to solve the optimization problem efficiently. The impacts of locations of LEDs and users to the dimming control are also studied with numerical results.

• Core Innovation & Objective • Developed a novel, integrated system architecture combining a modified USRP X310 software-defined radio platform with a custom-designed high-power LED optical transceiver. • Achieved high-speed, low-latency, and highly reliable audio-video transmission over Visible Light Communication (VLC) for intelligent transportation and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) applications, particularly in electromagnetically sensitive environments. • Key Technical Breakthroughs • LED Bandwidth Extension: Designed an innovative active pre-equalization circuit (based on a 4th-order high-pass RC bypass and op-amps) that dramatically increased the 3dB modulation bandwidth of a commercial 15W LED from 3 MHz to 120 MHz. • High-Speed Modulation: Successfully implemented 64QAM-OFDM modulation/demodulation using GNU Radio on the USRP, enabling spectrally efficient data transmission. • Advanced Optical Design: Custom-designed optical lenses (transmitter and receiver) and a high-power Bias-T circuit for efficient AC/DC coupling, ensuring the LED operates in its linear region and maximizing optical power transfer. • Stable Link Performance: Incorporated an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) circuit at the receiver, stabilizing the output voltage between 1.2V - 2.0V and maintaining a modulation signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) > 23 dB over varying distances. • Outstanding System Performance • The experimentally demonstrated performance metrics are exceptional for a VLC system: • Peak Data Rate: 500 Mbps • Communication Distance: 0 - 110 meters • Bit Error Rate (BER): As low as 1.74 × 10⁻⁵ (far below the 1 × 10⁻⁴ target) • End-to-End Latency: < 0.1 s • Beam Angle: 11.5° (Transmitter) • Field of View (FOV): ≤ 18° (Receiver) • System Integration and Design • Hardware-Software Co-Design: Seamless integration of the USRP X310 (handling digital baseband processing) with the custom analog optical front-end. • Compact and Practical: The system is designed for external mounting on vehicles, offering a practical solution for real-world deployment. • Simulation-Guided Design: Used LightTools for optical design and Optisystem for communication link simulation to validate the design before implementation. • Significance and Application Value • Solves Critical Challenges: Provides a high-speed, secure, and EMI-free communication alternative to traditional RF in environments like military operations, petroleum facilities, and intelligent transportation systems. • 6G Potential: Serves as a practical reference for the development of VLC as a complementary technology in 6G networks. • Demonstrates Feasibility: Successfully proves the viability of using commercial LEDs and USRP platforms for building high-performance, medium-to-long-range optical communication systems. • This work represents a significant step forward in practical high-speed VLC system design, combining theoretical innovation with robust engineering to achieve state-of-the-art performance. Existing vehicular VLC systems suffer from limited bandwidth, short transmission distances, low data rates, and support only a narrow range of communication services. To address these issues, this paper proposes a vehicle-mounted high-speed LED visible light communication (VLC) system based on Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). Leveraging 64QAM-OFDM digital modulation, an improved USRP X310 hardware platform, and a PC, we establish a novel architecture comprising digital baseband and optical transceiver modules. The baseband module eliminates traditional spectrum-shifting circuits and antennas, retaining only FPGA and ADC/DAC units. Audio/video files undergo 64QAM-OFDM modulation directly on the PC, with modulated signals output via DAC to a custom-designed wide-bandwidth LED transceiver. A broadband hardware equalization network based on a fourth-order RC bypass circuit was designed expands the 3dB bandwidth of high-power LEDs from 3 MHz to 120 MHz. Combined with automatic gain control (AGC), this achieves an optical transceiver with 12–15 W output power, >23 dB optical modulation signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and stable receiver output voltage (1.2–2.0 V). The resulting compact system delivers low latency, high data rates, and high reliability. Under aligned optical path conditions, the system achieves >1 Mbit/s at 110 m (BER 0.49 × 10⁻⁵, delay 0.009-0.05s) and a peak rate of 500 Mbit/s at 10 m (BER 7.4 × 10⁻⁵), with an 11.5° transmit angle and a receiver field of view (FOV) of less than 18°. This work demonstrates the feasibility of high-power LED-based 64QAM-OFDM communication using USRP X310 for medium- to long-range vehicular links, providing a reference for intelligent transportation systems.

The exponential rise in wireless communication demands and allied applications have revitalized academia-industries to develop an efficient and potential solution. Furthermore, the high-pace increasing scarcity of radio spectrum has also alarmed researchers to achieve better Quality of Service (QoS) centric solution. To meet such demands Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems have gained global attention; however, up surging high rate, range and reliability (3R) needs demand better performance. Towards these goals, Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) based VLC systems is an efficient approach; though its efficacy under Multiple Users (MU) conditions remains least explored. Enabling MIMO-MU based VLC can achieve 3R objectives effectively; however, factors like multipath attenuation, interferences and varied impairment-affects makes classical approached confined. The MIMO-MU VLC systems require robust error, noise or interference resilient transmission even under adverse conditions such as non-linear LED, multipath attenuation and interference. Towards these objectives, in this paper a highly robust MIMO-MU VLC system is developed that incorporates an augmented MIMO channel design and combined pre-coding and post equalization schemes. To alleviate major interference probability in MIMO-MU environment, proposed model incorporates time (delay)-multiplexing based data transmission followed by signal adaptive precoding and Volterra Kernel based Hybrid-equalizer. This approach enables interference and noise removal as well as LED non-linearity handling under MIMO-MU VLC communication. The use of a Volterra Kernel based Decision Feedback Equalization with both linear as well as non-linear equalization enables proposed VLC system to exhibit low Bit Error Rate with low modulation index and taps, that optimizes trade-off between performance as well as complexity.

Facing the current shortage of radio frequency spectrum resources, visible light communications (VLC) technology has been proposed to be a candidate technology in the sixth generation (6G), especially in the application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). And the propagation characteristics of VLC channel are critical for VLC system design and optimization. Furthermore, the impact of weather conditions on VLC channel cannot be ignored considering the vehicular VLC in ITS. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the impact of different weather types including fog and relative humidity (RH) on VLC in a laboratory atmospheric chamber. To simulate adverse weather conditions, we change the levels of fog density and water vapor introduced into the chamber, respectively. Then we measure the power attenuation and the bit error rate (BER) performance of VLC system under fog and RH conditions. We find that the VLC system will exhibit worse BER performance in the fog impaired channel than RH conditions. Besides, the results show that the bit errors will not happen until the attenuation reaches the threshold, i.e. attenuated by about 60% for both fog and RH conditions in our experiments. After that, the BER will deteriorate badly even up to 20%.

Recently, visible light communication (VLC) system has gained attention due to its higher data rate, wider spectrum, higher security, lower weight, extensive lifespan of LEDs, smaller sizes of apertures and lower power consumption, lower cost, and no health issues etc. The VLC is used to strengthen the radio frequency (RF) communication and it also improves the communication performance in short range such as homes, offices, corridors, hospitals, aircrafts etc. The VLC provides dual functionality, that is, illumination and communication through the same LED simultaneously. It needs fast switching of LED (which is not detectable by human eyes) along with some appropriate modulation schemes for VLC to provide communication and illumination simultaneously. Meanwhile, LED should be powered on for the duration of communication, which conversely creates two challenges. First, the LED would consume more electrical power, which makes the system expensive. Second, LED can also be used in a dimming mode to save the power. Dimming of LED decreases the data rate. The data rate is inadequate due to modulation bandwidth of high brightness LED. The power and the data rate can be achieved by using different modulation schemes or line encoding schemes. There are a number of other factors such as interference of sun light, reflection of mirror or other fluorescent or candescent light disturbing the communication due to visible light usage in communication, interference to other VLC devices, integration of VLC with existing architecture of communication system, that is, Wi-Fi. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. Section 1.1 gives an overview of VLC, followed by the brief discussion on the VLC system architecture in Section 1.2. Section 1.3 highlights the applications of the VLC. The general modulation schemes are given in Section 1.4. Then, Section 1.5 discusses the power efficient techniques, spectral efficient techniques are covered in Section 1.6, and Section 1.7 demonstrates the interference cancellation techniques. This chapter also discusses a comparison of different modulation techniques in terms of power efficiency, spectral efficiency, and interference cancellation and concludes with the best suited technique for power, spectrum, and interference.

This paper analyzes the performance of a dual-hop hybrid radio frequency - visible light communications (VLCs) system. VLC exploits high frequencies for signal propagation for short-range and is highly susceptible to blockages. Hence, in this work, the sensitivity of the VLC toward the blockages is explored. This study examines outdoor-indoor communication for an urban scenario featuring an office environment. The VLC system is designed by considering multiple VLC access points serving the end users in the presence of human blockages. Selection combining is employed to select the access point which offers the maximum instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio at the user. To capture the outdoor scenario, path loss modeling is conducted to account for signal attenuation from outdoor to indoor spaces. The outdoor scenario is modeled using Nakagami-m fading channels while VLC is employed for the indoor scenario. System performance is assessed in closed-form expression for outage probability and the symbol error rate for binary phase shift keying and quadrature amplitude modulation. A deep learning-based approach detects the symbols by tracking dynamic changes in the channel. Simulation results corroborate the correctness of derived analytical expressions and reveal that blockages significantly impact both single and multiple LED based communication channels.

Recently, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been proposed in visible light communications (VLC) systems to boost the data rate by utilizing spatial multiplexing. Unlike RF systems in VLC, lighting requirements, such as dimming control, should be taken into consideration for the design of a VLC transceiver. Moreover, VLC systems are inherently nonlinear and dynamic-range-limited. To drive an LED transmitter, the signal is bounded by a turn-on value and a saturation value. In this letter, we show how the dynamic-range constraint and dimming control impact the design of MIMO transceiver. Three different MIMO schemes are proposed and studied by theoretical analysis and simulation.

Power control technology is necessary in Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems because of the multipath distortion and shadowing. When a power control algorithm is applied to the system, feedback error is inevitable. In this paper, we analyze the closed-loop power control algorithm and the influence of the power control error (PCE) in VLC systems. To analyze the effect of the PCE in VLC systems, the proposed system is studied with different modulation schemes and coding rates in terms of BER.

While the traditional Visible Light Communication (VLC) system has attracted a lot of research attentions on boosting throughput, using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices, e.g. existing cameras on the smartphones, is a recent trend to implement readily deployable VLC systems. In particular, since LED-Camera VLC systems have shown a promising potential in large indoor communication due to the growing deployment of LED lighting infrastructure, a comprehensive VLC system with cooperative transmission and roaming support has become an impending need. To this end, we propose a novel VLC and visible light sensing (VLS) system to address that by leveraging LED sensing and effective encoding/decoding schemes. It is achieved first by utilizing LED sensing via converting parts of LED luminaire into light sensors to detect diffuse reflection change caused by presence of the user. After the users are detected and located, the system employs rateless codes and newly designed code assignment scheme to collaboratively transmit to detected users in their communication cells. We believe the proposed system has the potential to a roaming support VLC system in the whole building or indoor areas.

The need to exchange data wirelessly has increased as the growth of the number of mobile devices. Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology to alleviate the growing traffic problem. However, the occlusion problem is a difficulty in VLC system. In order to solve the problem, an anti-occlusion VLC system has been proposed in this article. In this VLC system, we propose the channel cooperative selection mechanism, which is based on the best-response dynamics and best response strategies of the game theory. This mechanism uses bit error ratio (BER) as the utility function to optimize system performance. In addition, the system provides three candidate communication channels, including direct channel, indirect channel, and mixed channel, to active users who will select the optimal communication channel. Moreover, the anti-occlusion VLC system has many application scenarios, such as the office, which has practical significance. For verifying the validity of the proposed mechanism, we accomplish the simulation results in terms of BER and throughput in different communication cases. It is demonstrated that the proposed channel cooperative selection mechanism in VLC systems offers superior performance in environment of obstructions.

This paper proposes an asymmetric frequency shift keying (AFSK) modulation technique for visible light communications (VLC) systems. AFSK is derived from the normal FSK in response to the non-negative aspect of VLC technology. AFSK provides VLC systems with a low cost and low complexity modulation technique that mitigates flickering and dimming for both square and rectified sine waves signals. The binary version of AFSK is analyzed and a general expression is proposed to its carrier frequency based on the original FSK. Simulated results of selected AFSK constellation sizes which perform better than on-off keying are presented. We also present M-ary FSK (MFSK) modulation in the VLC channel.

This study discusses delay modeling for Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems using a camera as the receiver. VLC is a communication technology that transmits information by modulating the intensity of light, which is then captured by a photo-detector or image sensor. While the delay characteristics of VLC have not been extensively studied, particularly in systems where a camera is used as the receiver, existing models have not adequately captured the unique properties of such systems. In this paper, we propose a delay modeling approach for camera-based VLC using queuing theory. Specifically, we model the system as a D/G/1 queue and compare the results from theoretical analysis, simulation, and real-world measurements. The results validate the accuracy of the proposed model. Moreover, the model shows promise for analytically evaluating scenarios that have not been previously addressed, such as multinode communication and retransmission-induced delays in VLC systems.

In general, visible light communication (VLC) systems, which utilise white light-emitting diodes (LEDs), only offer a bandwidth limited to the lower MHz region. Therefore, providing VLC-based high data rate communications systems using VLC becomes a challenging task. To address this challenge, we propose a solution based on multiplexing in both the frequency and space domains. We experimentally demonstrate a 4 × 4 imaging multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) VLC system (i.e., space multiplexing) utilising multiband carrierless amplitude and phase (m-CAP) modulation (i.e., frequency multiplexing). Independently, both MIMO and m-CAP have separately shown the remarkable ability to improve the transmission speeds in VLC systems, and hence, here we combine them to further improve the net data rate. We investigate the link performance by varying the number of subcarriers m, link distance L, and signal bandwidth B <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">sig</sub> . From all the values tested, we show that a data rate of ~249 Mb/s can be maximally achieved for m = 20, B <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">sig</sub> = 20 MHz, and L = 1 m, at a bit error rate of 3.2 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> using LEDs with ~4 MHz bandwidth.

Multi-user access is one of the key problems in the visible light communication (VLC). In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an approach for multi-user access based on multi-band CAP modulation over a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) VLC system using a single RGB LED. In this scenario each wavelength will provide 3 sub-bands. Depending on the combination of the different wavelength and the sub-bands, a dynamic capacity can be achieved for up to 9 users access. At the transmitter a weighted pre-equalization method is proposed to overcome frequency attenuation of the LED, while at the receiver a post-equalizer based on modified cascaded multi-modulus algorithm (CMMA) is utilized. The experimental results show that the bit error rate (BER) for an over-all 1.35 Gb/s CAP64 signal over 30-cm transmission can be under the 7% forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3.8 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> . The results clearly demonstrate the benefit and feasibility of the multi-band CAP modulation for the short range multi-user VLC systems.

Visible light communications (VLC) are gaining an important role in 6G network deployment scenarios. Although 6G networks are planned to deliver incredibly high throughput and fulfill new applications, present frequency bands may be insufficient. Furthermore, 6G will provide improved coverage by merging terrestrial networks with underwater, air, and space networks. So VLC is used instead of the standard wireless communications which is incapable of providing such high-data rates for the non-terrestrial networks. VLC is a power-efficient and safe wireless communication system that operates in the visible light spectrum. In addition, VLC overcomes RF communication bandwidth limitations. In this paper, the overall aggregated throughput, data rate, power, and spectrum-efficiency in VLC systems will be improved by promoting a novel unipolar system titled improved aggregated rate for optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (IARO-OFDM). Moreover, introducing the precoding peak to average power ratio (PAPR) reduction technique to get a power efficient system and enhance the VLC system performance. Also, the authors provide a mathematical description and evaluation for the proposed IARO-OFDM system, in addition to comparing the proposed one with other current approaches which demonstrate that IARO-OFDM has a high data rate ratio (43.75%) with an acceptable system bit error rate system performance compared to other existing schemes.