Visible light communications (VLC) are proposed for increasing the spectral efficiency and the number of devices served in indoor environments, while providing illumination through light emitting diodes (LED). For VLC, each optical access point (AP) provides a small and confined area of coverage. Since several sources of light are usually deployed in overlapping fashion in order to provide satisfactory illumination, VLC are limited by inter-cell interference. Moreover, transmission from a specific optical AP can be blocked by the elements of the scenario. On the other hand, radio-frequency (RF) systems such as WiFi are usually available in most of the indoor scenarios. In this work, we first propose a dynamic cell formation method for grouping the optical APs in multiple optical cells that cover a footprint each minimizing the inter-cell interference. After that, we use transmission based on blind interference alignment (BIA) in each optical cell. Considering the coexistence with RF systems based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), a load balancing algorithm is proposed for managing the resources of the resulting hybrid VLC/RF network and determining the user association to each system. However, the complexity of this optimization problem is excessively high for practical VLC/RF networks. In order to obtain a suboptimal but tractable solution, we propose a decentralized optimization method based on Lagrangian multipliers. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms other approaches for user grouping and managing the resources of hybrid VLC/RF networks.

Visible light communications (VLC) have received significant attention as a way of moving part of the saturated indoor wireless traffic to the wide and unregulated visible optical spectrum. Nowadays, VLC are considered as a suitable technology, for several applications such as high-rate data transmission, supporting internet of things communications or positioning. The signal processing originally derived from radio-frequency (RF) systems such as cooperative or precoding schemes can be applied to VLC. However, its implementation is not straightforward. Furthermore, unlike RF transmission, VLC present a predominant line-of-sight link, although a weak non-LoS component may appear due to the reflection of the light on walls, floor, ceiling and nearby objects. Blocking effects may compromise the performance of the aforementioned transmission schemes. There exist several surveys in the literature focused on VLC and its applications, but the management of the shadowing and interference in VLC requires a comprehensive study. To fill this gap, this work introduces the implementation of cooperative and precoding schemes to VLC, while remarking their benefits and drawbacks for overcoming the shadowing effects. After that, the combination of both cooperative and precoding schemes is analyzed as a way of providing resilient VLC networks. Finally, we propose several open issues that the cooperative and precoding schemes must face in order to provide satisfactory VLC performance in indoor scenarios.

Visible light communications (VLC) have been recently proposed to enhance the capacity of next generation of wireless services. Moreover, VLC networks usually comprise a large number of overlapping optical access points (APs). Moreover, each of these APs provides a small and confined area of coverage in order to generate satisfactory illumination. In this work, a user-centric (UC) clustering formation based on the K-means algorithm is proposed to manage the inter-cell interference (ICI) and enhance the performance of VLC networks. Moreover, assuming that each user is equipped with a reconfigurable photodetector, the use of blind interference alignment (BIA) in each UC cluster is considered. Notice that the data rate demands are not the same for all the users. We formulate an optimization problem to maximize the utility of the network resources allocated to the users based on their demands. After that, a centralized algorithm is proposed to obtain an optimal solution through exhaustive search, which is subject to high complexity. To reduce the complexity of this optimization problem, the problem is divided into sub-problems based on the number of constructed UC clusters. Then, a distributed algorithm via Lagrangian multipliers is proposed within each UC cluster with the aim of providing a near optimal solution to the centralized algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation algorithms provide higher performance than a uniform resource allocation scheme among users.

The use of light-emitting diodes (LED) for ambient illumination leads to visible light communications (VLC) as a promising technology for providing both constant lighting and high-speed wireless services in indoor environments. Since multiple LED sources can transmit to several users, this scenario naturally forms a multiple user multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) system. In this sense, transmit precoding (TPC) schemes based on channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) originally devised for radio-frequency (RF) systems have been proposed for their implementation in VLC. However, beyond providing CSIT or the need for cooperation among transmitters, which also result challenging in RF systems, there are several constraints such as the non-negativity of the transmitted signal or providing constant illumination that hamper the performance of TPC schemes in VLC. Taking into consideration these constraints, this paper explores the use of Blind Interference Alignment (BIA) for achieving multiplexing gain without CSIT or cooperation among LED lights. To do that, we devise the concept of reconfigurable photodetector that allows to switch among distinct and linearly independent channel responses. Simulation results show that the use of vBIA schemes based on the proposed reconfigurable photodetector results suitable for VLC systems.

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications are one of the most promising 6G scenarios. However, V2V communications demand high data rates and extremely low-latency requirements that are difficult to satisfy nowadays. Recently, vehicular visible light communications (V-VLC) have been proposed as a promising technology to guarantee such requirements. Multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) techniques can potentially achieve high data rates. However, when applied to V-VLC, they confront challenges such as the latency because of the need for closed-loop transmission or the correlation among optical channel responses. This article explains the use of blind interference alignment (BIA) for V-VLC based on the concept of a reconfigurable photodetector to provide linearly independent channel responses. It is shown that BIA solves the issues of MIMO techniques and may comply with the 6G V-VLC requirements. Besides, the vehicles are a convenient platform for implementing a reconfigurable photodetector. Finally, the open issues for BIA implementation in V-VLC are discussed to inspire future research.