Lightbeam Configuration Method and Interference Elimination Resource Scheduling for Indoor Multibeam VLC Networks

Abstract

Abstract Visible light communications (VLC) is considered as an alternative communications technology for providing indoor wireless services. VLC systems are expected to offer high data transmission rate and seamless coverage. In order to achieve these requirements, VLC systems utilizing multi-lightbeam access points (multibeam VLC-AP) for downlink transmission have been proposed recently. In this paper, we present a lightbeam configuration method and an interference elimination resource scheduling mechanism (IERS) for indoor multibeam multi-access point VLC systems. The proposed lightbeam configuration method ensures seamless connectivity between user equipment and VLC-AP. The proposed IERS mechanism consists of a beam assignment algorithm and a resource allocation algorithm for eliminating co-channel interference as well as improving system performance. Performance results obtained by computer simulation indicate that there are significant improvements in terms of downlink signal to interference plus noise ratio, user throughput and packet delay when the proposed IERS mechanism is deployed.