A hybrid OFDM-WDM Visible Light
Communications
(Invited paper)
Zabib Ghassemlooy
1
, Zhen Zhan
2
, Min Zhang
2
, Dahai Han
2
, and H. Le-Minh
1
1
Optical Communications Research Group, NCRLab, Northumbria University, UK, Email: z.ghassemlooy@northumbria.ac.uk
2
State Key Lab of Info.Photon. & Opt. Comm., BUPT, Beijing 100876, China, Email: zhenzhan@bupt.edu.cn
Abstract—The paper presents a hybrid orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) – wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM) visible light communication (VLC). Direct
detection is adopted in place of complex digital signal processing
such as channel estimation and channel equalization, or even
forward error corrections. Generic red, green and blue light
emitting diodes (LED) are used for high-speed WDM based 3-
channel VLC and white LED for indoor illumination. In each
channel, we have used direct current optical OFDM to improve
the frequency utilization efficiency. We report an experimental
data rate of 288 Mb/s over a transmission span of 1m for indoor
applications.
Keywords—Visible light communications, OFDM, Wavelength
division multiplexing
I. INTRODUCTION
Due to the exponentially growing demand for bandwidth by
the end-users, we are continuously looking for new ways of
exploiting further the bandwidth efficiency potential of current
radio frequency (RF) based wireless technologies. However,
the spectrum congestion has become a real issue in RF
technologies demanding radical action to address the future
demand for the bandwidth. One altenaive complementary
technology that could be exploited in number applications both
for indoor and outdoor environments is the emerging optical
wireless technologies due to their broad bandwidths, license
free spectra and inherent security. In recent years we have seen
growing research and development activities at a global level in
visible light communications (VLC) with the wavelength
between ~ 400nm (750THz) and ~ 700nm (428THz) as a
complementary technology to WiFi based systems in a number
of applications requiring high data rates connectivity including
homes, offices, hospitals, transportation, underwater, etc. [1,2].
This growing interest is mostly driven by the availability of
white light emitting diodes (LED) for illumination, which are
highly energy efficient and green, harmless for human body,
eye safety, low cost, and have longer life-span. The unique
feature of ceiling mount LEDs is their triple functionalities of
indoor illumination, data communications and indoor
localization [2-4].
There mainly two innovative light-generating process using
LEDs. Traditionally, a blue-emitting chip is coated along with
a yellow phosphor coating that converts the narrow wavelength
light into something the human eye perceives as white. With
the appropriate mix of phosphor materials, one can set the tone
of the light from cool to warm, depending on the application
they have in mind.!Warmer hues is achieved by stretching the
phosphor to longer wavelengths, but at the cost of reduced
emitted photons energy and ultimately reduced efficiency. To
overcome a combined red and blue LEDs are coating a
phosphor, which acts as a diffuser, thus ensuring a uniform
white light emission in all direction. The bandwidth of the
commercial phosphor-based LEDs is thus limited to few MHz
(typically 2-3 MHz [1]), because of the slow response of the
phosphors. In order to overcome this limitation, a blue filter at
the receiver can be used to suppress the slow phosphorescent
components; this increases the bandwidth up to 20 MHz [5].
One of the current white LED technologies is based on
combining red, green and blue (RGB) chip devices. The RGB
based LEDs clearly offers at least two significant advantages
for data communications including higher capacity due to the
bandwidth of the individual components in the triplet and the
potential for parallel transmission using wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM). But the downside with RGB LEDs is the
colour balancing, since the individual LEDs are switched on at
arbitrary and uncorrelated intervals [6]. The single chip LED is
the most widely used because of the reduced complexity of the
driving circuitry without the need for the colour balancing in
general lighting industry [7]. However, this is a trade-off
between reduced complexity and the slow transient response of
the phosphor. The latter reduces the device modulation
bandwidth by almost an order of magnitude to typically 3-4
MHz [2]. The phosphor effect may be mitigated by using a
blue optical filter at the receiver, but at the cost of substantial
power penalties where up to 90% of the received optical power
is filtered. In [8] OOK based VLC scheme employing a blue
filter was reported with a data rates of > 100 Mbps.
To increase the bandwidth a number of techniques have been
adopted including equalization, which has increased the
bandwidth by more than an order of magnitude over a very
short transmission distance [6,7,9]. Spectrally efficient
modulation schemes such orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM) or discrete multi-tone (DMT) [10],
which also take advantage of the high signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) available in VLC systems have been used to increase
the data rate [11, 12]. A number of high-speed VLC solutions
at hundreds of Mb/s and even at Gbps level have been reported
[13-18]. For example, a 1.1 Gbps off-line VLC system
employing 32 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) with
four space division multiplexing channels and 4 special LEDs
with a 3-dB bandwidth of 20 MHz and a fish eye lens over a
link span of 1 m has been reported [17]. A 750 Mbps off-line