Hybrid NOMA/OFDMA visible light communication system with coordinated multiple point transmission

Abstract

In this study, a hybrid non-orthogonal multiple access / orthogonal frequency division multiple access (NOMA/OFDMA) scheme is proposed for multi-cell multi-user visible light communication (VLC) systems. Each cell is divided into several sub-cells that are multiplexed using OFDMA. Users within the same sub-cell are multiplexed by NOMA. Thus, the hybrid NOMA/OFDMA scheme takes advantage of both NOMA and OFDMA, which not only improves the spectral efficiency of OFDMA but also avoids the co-channel interference of NOMA. Moreover, coordinated multiple-point transmission based on repeated coding is introduced to eliminate multiuser interference, which also improves the received signal-to-noise ratio of edge users. In this manner, spectrum resources are fully utilized, where the frequency reuse factor is equal to 1. Furthermore, we propose a two-dimensional power-allocation algorithm for the proposed hybrid NOMA/OFDMA VLC system. Based on the fixed power allocation strategy, power is allocated jointly among sub-cells and users within sub-cells to minimize the average symbol error rate (SER). The performance of the proposed system was investigated in detail by simulation, where the SERs were evaluated under different power ratios. Simulation results also show that the SER performance of the proposed hybrid NOMA/OFDMA VLC system is significantly improved compared to the traditional NOMA and OFDMA VLC systems in different VLC networks. Finally, the proof-of-concept experiment was set up, clearly validating the superiority of the proposed system further.