Free-space optical communications (FSO) propagated over a clear atmosphere suffers from irradiance fluctuation caused by small but random atmospheric temperature fluctuations. This results in decreased signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and consequently impaired performance. In this paper, the error performance of the FSO using a subcarrier intensity modulation (SIM) based on a binary phase shift keying (BPSK) scheme in a clear but turbulent atmosphere is presented. To evaluate the system error performance in turbulence regimes from weak to strong, the probability density function (pdf) of the received irradiance after traversing the atmosphere is modelled using the gamma-gamma distribution while the negative exponential distribution is used to model turbulence in the saturation region and beyond. The effect of turbulence induced irradiance fluctuation is mitigated using spatial diversity at the receiver. With reference to the single photodetector case, up to 12 dB gain in the electrical SNR is predicted with two direct detection PIN photodetectors in strong atmospheric turbulence.

This paper theoretically and experimentally investigate the spectrum attenuation of free space optical (FSO) communication systems operating at visible and near infrared (NIR) wavelengths (0.6 μm <; λ <; 1.6 μm) under fog and smoke in a controlled laboratory condition. Fog and smoke are generated and controlled homogeneously along a dedicated atmospheric chamber of length 5.5 m. A new wavelength dependent empirical model is proposed to predict the fog and smoke attenuation operating at visible and NIR wavelengths. Comparison of the new proposed model with the measured continuous attenuation spectrum from visible-NIR in the fog and smoke channels shows a close relationship than the semi-empirical Kim and Kruse fog models. The experimental results also show the selection for the possible appropriate wavelengths from visible-NIR for FSO links to achieve the maximum link span in dense fog conditions.

This letter reports the experimental demonstration of an indoor visible light nonimaging multiple-input multiple-output system with an aggregate error free bit rate of 50 Mb/s over a distance of 2 m. The system uses four independent white LED transmitters, each transmitting 12.5 Mb/s of data in the ON-OFF keying nonreturn zero format, and four independent nonimaging optical receivers. The performance of four detection methods ranging from the basic channel inversion to the more advanced space time techniques is compared experimentally. The results gathered demonstrate that the simplest technique is capable of the same bit error rate as the most complex scheme. The system also provides full illumination with a mean level of 350 Lux satisfying the ISO lighting standards for home and office environments.

This article presents a study of digital pulse interval modulation (DPIM) for optical wireless communications using intensity modulation with direct detection. The DPIM code properties are discussed, and expressions for the transmission capacity, power spectrum, and error probability are presented. We show that for a given number of bits per symbol, DPIM has a higher transmission capacity, a similar spectral profile, and only a marginally inferior error probability performance compared with pulse position modulation, and is rather less complex to implement. Finally, problems associated with the nonuniform symbol length characteristics of DPIM together with possible solutions are discussed

We present a real-time indoor visible light positioning system based on optical camera communication, where the coordinate data in the on and off keying format is transmitted via light emitting diode (LED) based lights and captured using a smartphone camera. The position of camera is determined using a novel Perspective-n-Point problem algorithm, which determines the geometric perspective of the LED coordinates. The experimental results show that the proposed system offers mean position errors of 4.81 and 6.58 cm for the heights of 50 cm and 80 cm, respectively.

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate for the first time an on off keying modulated visible light communications system achieving 170 Mb/s using an artificial neural network (ANN) based equalizer. Adaptive decision feedback (DF) and linear equalizers are also implemented and the system performances are measured using both real time (TI TMS320C6713 digital signal processing board) and offline (MATLAB) implementation of the equalizers. The performance of each equalizer is analyzed in this paper using a low bandwidth (4.5 MHz) light emitting diode (LED) as the transmitter and a large bandwidth (150 MHz) PIN photodetector as the receiver. The achievable data rates using the white spectrum are 170, 90, 40 and 20 Mb/s for ANN, DF, linear and unequalized topologies, respectively. Using a blue filter to isolate the fast blue component of the LED (at the cost of the power contribution of the yellowish wavelengths) is a popular method of improving the data rate. We further demonstrate that it is possible to sustain higher data rates from the white light with ANN equalization than the blue component due to the high signal-to-noise ratio that is obtained from retaining the yellowish wavelengths. Using the blue component we could achieve data rates of 150, 130, 90 and 70 Mb/s for the same equalizers, respectively.