Performance analysis of adaptive OFDM modulation scheme in VLC vehicular communication network in realistic noise environment

Abstract

Optical wireless communications (OWC) has emerged as a strong candidate for wireless communications, due to the capacity limitation in the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. Especially visible light communication (VLC) has great potential for short-range outdoor vehicular communications, as vehicle LED lights also transmit data. However, outdoor VLC channels vary fast and, experience multipath scattering and reflection resulting in time domain dispersion. Outdoor VLC links are also subjected to high levels of ambient noise, especially from the sun. Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), which has proven robustness to multi path fading and noise effects in RF links can also be deployed in VLC links. In this paper, optical OFDM (O-OFDM) along with adaptive modulation scheme is investigated in VLC for vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications. A (2×2) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel, with multiple polarimetric bidirectional reflections and realistic sunlight interference is considered. Two schemes of O-OFDM; direct current biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) and asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) are investigated. Simulation results of the proposed model show increase in data rates up to 50 Mbps along with reduced bit error rate (BER) under both line of sight (LOS) and non-LOS and high noise conditions.