Hybrid RF/visible light communication in downlink wireless system

Abstract

The spectrum crunch in Radio Frequency (RF) Communication and the prospect of Visible Light Communication (VLC) as an alternative to RF has made way for high speed VLC deployment. The ubiquitous coverage of RF and the high speed data rate achieved with VLC, make the two technologies complimentary to each other, making the hybrid RF/VLC an emerging trend in wireless networks. This study presents a downlink communication of a hybrid RF-VLC, where the signal received through RF channel by a relay is decoded and the symbols are converted into an electrical signals. The electrical signal is fed to an array of LEDs in the relay where data is transmitted in rays of light from LEDs. The hybrid RFVLC system performance is compared with a conventional RF system to understand the performance difference between the two communication models. Thus, the performance of both system models are analysed in terms of Symbol Error Rate and Outage Probability. Numerical results show that the proposed hybrid RF-VLC system is superior to conventional lone RF cooperative system.