Xingyu Lu

LED-based high-speed visible light communications

We are seeing a growing use of light emitting diodes (LEDs) in a range of applications including lighting, TV and backlight board screen, display etc. In comparison with the traditional incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs, LEDs offer long life-space, much higher energy efficiency, high performance cost ratio and above all very fast switching capability. LED based Visible Light Communications (VLC) is an emerging field of optical communications that focuses on the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans can see. Depending on the transmission distance, we can divide the whole optical network into two categories, long haul and short haul. Visible light communication can be a promising candidate for short haul applications. In this paper, we outline the configuration of VLC, its unique benefits, and describe the state of the art research contributions consisting of advanced modulation formats including adaptive bit loading OFDM, carrierless amplitude and phase (CAP), pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and single carrier Nyquist, linear equalization and nonlinear distortion mitigation based on machine learning, quasi-balanced coding and phase-shifted Manchester coding. These enabling technologies can support VLC up to 10Gb/s class free space transmission.

Nonlinear Compensation of Multi-CAP VLC System Employing Clustering Algorithm Based Perception Decision

Nonlinearities induced by the electrical amplifiers and the optoelectronic devices can be detrimental effects in visible light communication (VLC) systems. In this paper, clustering algorithm based perception decision (CAPD) is proposed to mitigate the nonlinear distortion in a VLC system. Aided by CAPD nonlinear compensation, we experimentally demonstrate a multiband CAP modulated VLC system consisting of a red light-emitting diode as a transmitter and a p-i-n photodiode based differential receiver. The system performances including the Q factor, bit error rate (BER), and computational complexity are thoroughly investigated when using a pure linear blind equalization scheme (modified cascaded multimodulus algorithm, M-CMMA) and when using hybrid linear and nonlinear equalizers (M-CMMA + Volterra series based nonlinear equalizer). The experiment results show that compared to pure linear equalizer case, the measured BER can be enhanced up to 1e−6, correspondingly the Q factor of each subband can be improved for around 1.6–2.5xa0dB by employing CAPD. The CAPD method can outperform the Volterra series based nonlinear equalizer with a lower BER value (at least 10% reduction) and relatively lower complexity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the clustering algorithm in machine learning is successfully applied to VLC systems.