Dimming controlled multi header pulse position modulation (MH-PPM) for visible light communication system

Abstract

Abstract Visible light communication (VLC) has recently drawn more attention due to the existing light sources having a bandwidth that can deliver data transmission at higher bit rates. To maintain desired brightness levels along with reliable data transmission, VLC requires to control dimming levels. In this paper, a dimming control scheme based on pulse position modulation (PPM) is proposed, which constructs a dimming encoded frame per symbol of input data. The scheme utilizes multiple headers, which is selected depending on the dimming levels and the number of bits in a symbol of input data. The proposed scheme for the VLC system supports various dimming levels. The multi header PPM frame generation for input data K = 4 $K=4$ and dimming values α = 0.25, 0.375, and 0.5 is simulated using NI Labview. The proposed dimming scheme has an excellent short-run length property which is well under the maximum flickering time period and is thus capable of flicker mitigation. The slot error performance of the proposed dimming control scheme in a VLC system for varying dimming levels is simulated in Matlab. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has excellent error performance for a low dimming value of α = 0.25. The experimental results are also carried out in the optisystem considering the practical measured parameters of the indoor environment for free space channel and simulating the VLC system for the proposed scheme. The simulation is carried for different data rates over varying link ranges and the experimental results show that the proposed scheme performs best when dimming value α = 0.25 and data rate 2 Gbps.