Optimized Analog Multi-Band Carrierless Amplitude and Phase Modulation for Visible Light Communication-Based Internet of Things Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a multi-user Visible Light Communication (VLC)-based Internet of Things (IoT) system using multi band-Carrierless Amplitude and Phase (m-CAP) modulation for IoT applications. The proposed system uses a digital m-CAP modulator embedded in a ceiling LED light fixture and analog receivers, aiming at low-cost, low-power, and small-sized IoT devices. The performance was evaluated in terms of the filtering stage design and the usage of guard bands. Different pairs of emitter and receiver filters were considered. While Bessel and Butterworth analog filters were tested in the analog receiver, the digital m-CAP modulator pulse shaping filter considered raised cosine filters, as well as digital matched filters for the analog Bessel and Butterworth filters. Regarding the guard bands, two approaches were considered: either by using the raised cosine roll-off factor (bandwidth compression) or by suppressing the even bands. The Bit Error Rate (BER) performance was obtained by simulation. The usage of the Bessel filter in the receiver, along with a digital matched filter, proved to be the best solution, achieving a BER lower than 10−3 for an Eb/No of 6 dB, using a third-order filter. Furthermore, guard bands should be used in order to mitigate inter-band interference in order to have improved performance when multiple users intend to simultaneously communicate.