Search

Underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) systems provide the potential to establish secure high-data-rate communication links in underwater environments. The uniqueness of oceanic impairments, such as absorption, scattering, oceanic turbulence, and air bubbles demands accurate statistical channel models based on empirical measurements for the development of UOWC systems adapted to different types of water and link conditions. Recently, generalized Gamma and a mixture of two generalized Gamma probability density functions (PDF) were proposed to describe the statistical behavior of small and large air bubbles, respectively, when considering several levels of particle-induced scattering. In this paper, we derive novel closed-form analytic expressions to compute the bit error rate (BER) and outage performance using both proposed PDFs for various scattering conditions. Furthermore, simple asymptotic expressions are obtained to determine the diversity order of each scenario. Monte Carlo simulation results verify the obtained theoretical expressions. Our results also reveal that UOWC systems present lower BER and outage performance under more turbid water cases with respect to the tap water case due to the higher diversity order and despite the significant increases in pathloss at short link distances. Particle-induced scattering provides an inherent mechanism of turbid waters to mitigate air bubble-induced fluctuations and light blockages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced light sources in the blue-green band are crucial for underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems. Vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) can produce high output power and good beam quality, making them suitable for UWOC. This paper presents a 108 m distance UWOC based on a 100 mW 490 nm blue VECSEL and an acousto-optic modulator (AOM). The high-quality beam, which is near diffraction-limited, undergoes relatively small optical attenuation when using a conventional avalanche photodiode (APD) as the detector and employing 64-pulse position modulation (PPM). At the time-slot frequency of 50 MHz, the bit error rate (BER) of the UWOC was 2.7 × 10−5. This is the first reported AOM-based UWOC system with a transmission distance over 100 m. The estimated maximum transmission distance may be improved to about 180 m by fully utilizing the detection accuracy of the APD according to the measured attenuation coefficient of the blue VECSEL used. This type of UWOC system, composed of a high-beam-quality light source and a conventional detector, make it more closely suited to practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visible light communication (VLC) is an emerging mode of wireless communication that supports both illumination and communication. One essential function of VLC systems is the dimming control, which requires a sensitive receiver for low-light conditions. The use of an array of single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) is one promising approach to enhancing receivers' sensitivity in a VLC system. However, because of the non-linear effects brought on by the SPAD dead time, an increase in the brightness of the light might degrade its performance. In this paper, an adaptive SPAD receiver is proposed for VLC systems to ensure reliable operation under various dimming levels. In the proposed receiver, a variable optical attenuator (VOA) is used to adaptively control the SPAD's incident photon rate according to the instantaneous received optical power so that SPAD operates in its optimal conditions. The application of the proposed receiver in systems with various modulation schemes is investigated. When binary on–off keying (OOK) modulation is employed due to its good power efficiency, two dimming control methods of the IEEE 802.15.7 standard based on analogue and digital dimming are considered. We also investigate the application of the proposed receiver in the spectral efficient VLC systems with multi-carrier modulation schemes, i.e., direct current (DCO) and asymmetrically clipped optical (ACO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). Through extensive numerical results, it is demonstrated that the suggested adaptive receiver outperforms the conventional PIN PD and SPAD array receivers in terms of bit error rate (BER) and achievable data rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the hardware components of smartphones, namely, the use of displays and cameras in mobile devices as transmitters and receivers to establish a near-field multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) visible light communication (VLC) system. Based on the relationship between the grayscale values of transmitted and received signals, the physical channel responses are detected and approximated with a high-order regression to obtain the channel gain. With the constraint of bit numbers in the MIMO VLC system, an integer-type water-filling scheme was designed for bit allocation to improve transmission efficiency. The physical examinations show that bit error rate (BER) reduction can be 26.4% with Gaussian noise of 30 dB and detected channel gain compared with the equal bit allocation. The optimization of the simulation was confirmed with the bit assignments in real cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with visible light communication (VLC) technology can simultaneously offer flexible communications and illumination to service ground users. Since a poor UAV working environment increases interference sent to the VLC link, there is a pressing need to further ensure reliable data communications. Run-length limited (RLL) codes are commonly utilized to ensure reliable data transmission and flicker-free perception in VLC technology. Conventional RLL decoding methods depend upon look-up tables, which can be prone to erroneous transmissions. This paper proposes a novel recurrent neural network (RNN)-based decoder for RLL codes that uses sequence to sequence (seq2seq) models. With a well-trained model, the decoder has a significant performance advantage over the look-up table method, and it can approach the bit error rate of maximum a posteriori (MAP) criterion-based decoding. Moreover, the decoder is use to deal with multiple frames simultaneously, such that the totality of RLL-coded frames can be decoded by only one-shot decoding within one time slot, which is able to enhance the system throughput. This shows our decoder's great potential for practical UAV applications with VLC technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vehicular optical camera communication (VOCC) systems, LED panels are used to transmit visible light signals which are captured by cameras. The logic bits 1 and 0 are represented by the On and Off status of the LEDs in the panel. The bit error rate (BER) of the system is directly proportional to the distinguishability of the On and Off LEDs in the received LED panel images. The signal quality is commonly believed in telecommunications to improve with a higher transmitted power. Therefore, one might expect to get a lower BER in VOCC systems by simply using more powerful LED lights. However, this is not the case with VOCC systems. This paper shows that the LED distinguishability is simultaneously determined by two factors: The LED extinction ratio and LED interference. The former needs to be kept high and the latter kept low for better LED distinguishability. The problem is that both the extinction ratio and interference increase with the ratio of LED light to ambient light (L2A). Consequently, an optimal L2A ratio exists to achieve the optimal balance between the positive impact of the extinction ratio and the negative impact of the interference. This can bring about the lowest BER without changing the system's data rate. In addition, this paper shows that the optimal L2A ratio varies according to the interval between the LEDs in a panel. We analyze the effect of the L2A ratio and LED interval on LED distinguishability. We then formulate a constrained optimization problem to find the optimal L2A ratios corresponding to different LED intervals. The simulation results verify the necessity of LED to ambient light ratio optimization as it can bring about the lowest BER without scarifying other aspects of the VOCC system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes two solutions based on angle diversity receivers (ADRs) to mitigate inter-cell interference (ICI) in underground mining visible light communication (VLC) systems, one of them is a novel approach. A realistic VLC system based on two underground mining scenarios, termed as mining roadway and mine working face, is developed and modeled. A channel model based on the direct component in line-of-sight (LoS) and reflections of non-line-of-sight (NLoS) links is considered, as well as thermal and shot noises. The design and mathematical models of a pyramid distribution and a new hemi-dodecahedral distribution are addressed in detail. The performances of these approaches, accompanied by signal combining schemes, are evaluated with the baseline of a single photo-diode in reception. Results show that the minimum lighting standards established in both scenarios are met. As expected, the root-mean-square delay spread decreases as the distance between the transmitters and receivers increases. Furthermore, the hemi-dodecahedron ADR in conjunction with the maximum ratio combining (MRC) scheme, presents the best performance in the evaluated VLC system, with a maximum user data rate of 250 Mbps in mining roadway and 120 Mbps in mine working face, received energy per bit/noise power of 32 dB and 23 dB, respectively, when the bit error rate corresponds to 10-4, and finally, values of 120 dB in mining roadway and 118 dB in mine working face for signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio are observed in a cumulative distribution function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a low-power underwater acoustic (UWA) image transceiver based on generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) modulation for underwater communication is proposed. The proposed transceiver integrates a low-density parity-check code error protection scheme, adaptive 4-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and 16-QAM strategies, GFDM modulation, and a power assignment mechanism in an UWA image communication environment. The transmission bit error rates (BERs), the peak signal-to-noise ratios (PSNRs) of the received underwater images, and the power-saving ratio (PSR) of the proposed transceiver obtained using 4-QAM and 16-QAM, with perfect channel estimation, and channel estimation errors (CEEs) of 5%, 10%, and 20% were simulated. The PSNR of the received underwater image is 44.46 dB when using 4-QAM with a CEE of 10%. In contrast, PSNR is 48.79 dB when using 16-QAM with a CEE of 10%. When BER is 10−4, the received UW images have high PSNR values and high resolutions, indicating that the proposed transceiver is suitable for underwater image sensor signal transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coming years may see the advent of distributed implantable devices to support bioelectronic medicinal treatments. Communication between implantable components and between deep implants and the outside world can be challenging. Percutaneous wired connectivity is undesirable and both radiofrequency and optical methods are limited by tissue absorption and power safety limits. As such, there is a significant potential niche for ultrasound communications in this domain. In this paper, we present the design and testing of a reliable and efficient ultrasonic communication telemetry scheme using piezoelectric transducers that operate at 320 kHz frequency. A key challenge results from the multi-propagation path effect. Therefore, we present a method, using short pulse sequences with relaxation intervals. To counter an increasing bit, and thus packet, error rate with distance, we have incorporated an error correction encoding scheme. We then demonstrate how the communication scheme can scale to a network of implantable devices. We demonstrate that we can achieve an effective, error-free, data rate of 0.6 kbps, which is sufficient for low data rate bioelectronic medicine applications. Transmission can be achieved at an energy cost of 642 nJ per bit data packet using on/off power cycling in the electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we divide the irradiated area of visible light communication (VLC) into three parts, according to the influence of diffuse reflection, the irradiance half angle at the source and the communication distance on VLC. We present a volume ratio method to quantitatively analyze each divided part. In this work, based on the Lambertian reflection model of the VLC system in line-of-sight channels, five factors affecting the VLC performance are compared and discussed. A VLC system of a single white-light-emitting diode in a 10 m line-of-sight channel indoors is designed by using the intensity modulation and direct detection technique, and a three-dimensional model of the irradiated area is established.By comparing the distribution of the bit error rate (BER) of the optical signal at different lampshade heights, the volume ratio method is used to calculate the volume percentage of the three irradiated areas. The experimental results show that area II with a volume ratio greater than 50% is the best signal receiving area when compared with areas I and III, having a volume ratio in the range 20∼30%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data centers are crucial to the growth of cloud computing. Next-generation data center networks (DCNs) will rely heavily on optical technology. Here, we have investigated a bidirectional wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) free space optical communication (FSO) system for deployment in optical wireless DCNs. The system was evaluated for symmetric 10 Gbps 16—quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) intensity-modulated orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) downstream signals and 10 Gbps on-off keying (OOK) upstream signals, respectively. The transmission of optical signals over an FSO link is demonstrated using a gamma–gamma channel model. According to the bit error rate (BER) results obtained for each WDM signal, the bidirectional WDM-FSO transmission could achieve 320 Gbps over 1000 m free space transmission length. The results show that the proposed FSO topology offers an excellent alternative to fiber-based optical interconnects in DCNs, allowing for high data rate bidirectional transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the accuracy of signal recovery after transmitting over atmospheric turbulence channel, a deep-learning-based signal detection method is proposed for a faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) hybrid modulated optical wireless communication (OWC) system. It takes advantage of the long short-term memory (LSTM) network in the recurrent neural network (RNN) to alleviate the interdependence problem of adjacent symbols. Moreover, an LSTM attention decoder is constructed by employing the attention mechanism, which can alleviate the shortcomings in conventional LSTM. The simulation results show that the bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed LSTM attention neural network is 1 dB better than that of the back propagation (BP) neural network and outperforms by 2.5 dB when compared with the maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) detection method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a patient mobility support scheme for indoor non-directed optical body area networks (OBAN) is presented. The OBAN is an optical healthcare system where medical sensors are installed on various parts of the patient's body and are connected to an optical coordinator for transmitting the physiological signals via optical wireless links. In the proposed scheme, a white light-emitting diode (LED) was employed as the optical coordinator that was mounted on the patient body, while a photodetector (PD) was used as the receiver installed at the ceiling. We considered three practical mobility scenarios in terms of the location of the coordinator: (i) Shoulder, (ii) wrist, and (iii) both shoulder and wrist. The analytical channel model for multiple reflections in a non-directed OBAN was developed and validated in the form of simulations. In addition, experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed mobility scheme. It was found that the third scenario (shoulder and wrist) performed best, showing a bit error rate (BER) of 1.2 × 10−6 at a distance of 1.25 m. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed mobility support scheme in the OBAN added an additional degree of freedom to patients with reliable performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution, the concept of spatial modulation (SM) is firstly integrated into the structure of space-time block codes (STBC)-aided vertical Bell-labs layered space-time (VBLAST) systems, in order to strike a balanced tradeoff among bit error ratio (BER), spectral efficiency and computational complexity. First of all, in order to enhance the BER performance of STBC-VBLAST, we advocate an effective transmit power allocation (TPA) scheme with negligible implementation costs, while dividing the STBC and VBLAST layers with alleviated interference, so as to facilitate combination with SM. Then, we further utilize the unique structure of SM for enhancing the spectral efficiency of original STBC-VBLAST, wherein the information is conveyed by not only the amplitude/phase modulation (APM) symbols but also the antenna indices. In addition, constellation sets of STBC symbols are specifically designed to be rotated to make full use of the degrees of freedom. Finally, the performance advantages of the above-mentioned structures over traditional STBC-VBLAST are demonstrated by the theoretical derivation of a closed-form expression for the union bound on the bit error probability for various spectral efficiencies, and they are supported by simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose and validate an artificial neural network-based equalizer for the constant power 4-level pulse amplitude modulation in an optical camera communications system. We introduce new terminology to measure the quality of the communications link in terms of the number of row pixels per symbol N pps , which allows a fair comparison considering the progress made in the development of the current image sensors in terms of the frame rates and the resolutions of each frame. Using the proposed equalizer, we experimentally demonstrate a non-flickering system using a single light-emitting diode (LED) with N pps of 20 and 30 pixels/symbol for the unequalized and equalized systems, respectively. Potential transmission rates of up to 18.6 and 24.4 kbps are achieved with and without the equalization, respectively. The quality of the received signal is assessed using the eye-diagram opening and its linearity and the bit error rate performance. An acceptable bit error rate (below the forward error correction limit) and an improvement of ~66% in the eye linearity are achieved using a single LED and a typical commercial camera with equalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of visible light communications technology in communication-based vehicle applications is gaining more and more interest as the research community is constantly overcoming challenge after challenge. In this context, this article addresses the issues associated with the use of Visible Light Communications (VLC) technology in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications, while focusing on two crucial issues. On the one hand, it aims to investigate the achievable communication distance in V2V applications while addressing the least favorable case, namely the one when a standard vehicle rear lighting system is used as a VLC emitter. On the other hand, this article investigates another highly unfavorable use case scenario, i.e., the case when two vehicles are located on adjacent lanes, rather than on the same lane. In order to evaluate the compatibility of the VLC technology with the usage in inter-vehicle communication, a VLC prototype is intensively evaluated in outdoor conditions. The experimental results show a record V2V VLC distance of 75 m, while providing a Bit Error Ratio (BER) of 10−7–10−6. The results also show that the VLC technology is able to provide V2V connectivity even in a situation where the vehicles are located on adjacent lanes, without a major impact on the link performances. Nevertheless, this situation generates an initial no-coverage zone, which is determined by the VLC receiver reception angle, whereas in some cases, vehicle misalignment can generate a BER increase that can go up to two orders of magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural networks and their application in communication systems are receiving growing attention from both academia and industry. The authors note that there is a disconnect between the typical objective functions of these neural networks with regards to the context in which the neural network will eventually be deployed and evaluated. To this end, a new loss function is proposed and shown to increase the performance of neural networks when implemented in a communication system compared to previous methods. It is further shown that a 'split complex' approach used by many implementations can be improved via formalisation of the 'concatenated complex' approach described herein. Experimental results using the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) modulation formats with varying bandwidth compression factors over a wireless visible light communication (VLC) link validate the efficacy of the proposed method in a real system, achieving the lowest error vector magnitude (EVM), and thus bit error rate (BER), across all experiments, with a 5 dB to 10 dB improvement in the received symbols EVM overall compared to the baseline implementation, with bandwidth compressions down to 40% compared to OFDM, resulting in a spectral efficiency gain of 67%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a wireless sensor node's wireless communication fails after being deployed in an inaccessible area, the lost node cannot be repaired through a debugging interaction that relies on that communication. Visible light communication (VLC) as a supplement of radio wave communication can improve the transmission security at the physical layer due to its unidirectional propagation characteristic. Therefore, we implemented a VLC-based hybrid communication debugging system (HCDS) based on VLC using smartphone and sensor node. For the system's downlink, the smartphone is taken as the VLC gateway and sends the debugging codes to the sensor node by the flashlight. To improve the transmission efficiency of the downlink, we also propose a new coding method for source coding and channel coding, respectively. For the source coding, we analyze the binary instructions and compress the operands using bitmask techniques. The average compression rate of the binary structure reaches 84.11%. For the channel coding, we optimize dual-header pulse interval (DH-PIM) and propose overlapped DH-PIM (ODH-PIM) by introducing a flashlight half-on state. The flashlight half-on state can improve the representation capability of individual symbols. For the uplink of HCDS, we use the onboard LED of the sensor node to transmit feedback debugging information to the smartphone. At the same time, we design a novel encoding format of DH-PIM to optimize uplink transmission. Experimental results show that the optimized uplink transmission time and BER are reduced by 10.71% and 22%, compared with the original DH-PIM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]