Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiplexing for Indoor Optical Wireless

Communications using Visible Light
LEDs

S. K. Hashemi1, Z. Ghassemlooy1, L. Chao2, and D. Benhaddou3

1
Optical Communications Research Group, NCRLab,
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Web site: http://soe.unn.ac.uk/ocr

2
Department of Electronic and Information Engineering,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
3
Engineering Technology Department, College of Technology,
University of Houston, USA
1
CSNDSP 2008
 Contents

• Introduction
• Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) Links
• Combating Inter-symbol Interference
• OFDM
• Channel Estimation
• Simulation results
• Conclusions

2
CSNDSP 2008
 Introduction

• Invented more than 40 years ago.

• Has been adopted for several technologies:
– Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) services.
– IEEE 802.11a/g, IEEE 802.16a.
– Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB).
– Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcast: DVD in
Europe, ISDB in Japan
– 4G, IEEE 802.11n, IEEE 802.16, and IEEE 802.20.

3
CSNDSP 2008
 OWC Links

LOS  LOS Rx Non-LOS

Tx

No multipath Propagation Tx Rx

Only noise is limiting factor
Possibility of blocking Multipath Propagation
Tracking necessary to maintain  Intersymbol interference (ISI)
LOS link  Difficult to achieve high data date due to
ISI

CSNDSP 2008
 Techniques to Overcome ISI

• Guard slots - in digital modulation (PPM, PIM)

• Spread spectrum - at the expense of reduced bandwidth
efficiency
• Angle diversity - based on multibeam-narrow FOV
transceiver
• Adaptive decision equalizer
• USE OF multi-carriers transmission
– In this paper we investigate OFDM system where multipath
induced ISI and the effects of background noise are reduced by
taking the advantage of narrowband frequency interference, which
affects only one of the frequency sub-bands when compare to the
single-carrier modulation.
5
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM

• OFDM mainly used in RF based wireless

communication schemes offering

– high data rates capability

– high bandwidth efficiency
– and capable of dealing with the multipath induced ISI [9]

• Has been proposed in optical wireless

communication systems [10]
• Uses a large number of closely-spaced orthogonal
sub-carriers, each modulated at a low symbol rate
6
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM - Types

Wideband-OFDM Flash OFDM Vector OFDM

(W-OFDM) of Wi-LAN from Flarion (V-OFDM) of Cisco, Iospan,etc.
www.wi-lan.com www.flarion.com www.iospan.com

-- 2.4 GHz band -- Freq. Hopping for CCI -- MIMO Technology

-- 30-45Mbps in 40MHz reduction, reuse -- non-LoS coverage, mainly
-- large tone-width -- 1.25 to 5.0MHz BW for fixed access
(for mobility, overlay) -- mobility support -- upto 20 Mbps in MMDS

•Wi-LAN leads the OFDM Forum -- many proposals submitted to

IEEE 802.16 Wireless MAN
•Cisco leads the Broadband Wireless Internet Forum (BWIF)

7
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM Signal
Conventional multicarrier techniques
Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9 Ch.10

Frequency

Orthogonal multicarrier techniques

Ch.2 Ch.4 Ch.6 Ch.8 Ch.10

Ch.1 Ch.3 Ch.5 Ch.7 Ch.9

50% bandwidth saving

Frequency

8
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM - Spectrum

• The FFT (and its inverse,

Magnitude
the IFFT) are used to
create a multitude of T0
orthogonal subcarriers
using just a single TX.
• Subcarrier orthogonality
must be preserved in the
presence of
– timing jitter Frequenc
– frequency offset y

– fading.

9
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM System Architecture

Pilot signals uniformly inserted into all symbols (sub-carriers) for channel estimation
for diffuse optical links only.

 P  { X p (0), X p (1), , X p ( N p  1)}

10
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM
• IFFT converts X(k) of length N into a complex time-domain
OFDM signal.
x( n)  IFFTN { X (k )}(n)

• In order for the IFFT/FFT to create an ISI-free channel, the

channel must appear to provide a circular convolution.
• To mitigate the effects of multipath induced ISI, a guard
interval of G-sample (or cyclic prefix (CP)) is inserted
between symbols.
• The length of CP depends on the channel delay spread and
is normally considered to be grater than or equal to the
channel length (impulse response time) and less than
symbol duration
11
CSNDSP 2008
 Circular Convolution & DFT/IDFT

• Circular convolution:

• Circular convolution allows DFT!

• Detection of X (knowing H):

(note: ISI free! Just a scaling by H)

12
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM - Cyclic Prefix (CP)
• OFDM signal with CP is x[n]L, and so y[n] = x[n] * h[n].

 First v samples of ycp interference from preceding OFDM symbol =>

discarded.
 The last v samples disperse into the subsequent OFDM symbol =>
discarded.
 This leaves exactly L samples at output y, to recover the L data
symbols embedded in x. 13
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM
• The received OFDM signal propagated through the channel h(n) is
given by:
y r [n]  .s[n]  h[n]  w[n]
• where w[n] is the additive white Gaussian noise,  is the photodetector
responsivity, and  denotes the circular convolution.

Channel models:
• Recursive algorithm to take into account higher order reflections [11],
• MIMO method for speedy calculation of the impulse response [12].
• Mont Carlo ray-tracing algorithm and its modified version uses both the
Lambert’s diffuse and the Phong’s models to approximate surfaces with
a strong specular component [13-14].
• The Sphere model in [15]
• Fast iterative model capable of calculating high-order reflections [17].

14
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM - Channel Estimation

• With no knowledge of the channel,

channel estimation is required for
equalization and decoding provided Block type

• In one dimensional channel estimation

m
Ti

e
schemes pilot insertion is done in
Block-type - all sub-carriers is used as pilot
in a specific period. It uses the least square
(LS) or the minimum mean-square error in a Carriers
slow fading channel [18]) Come type
Comb-type - part of the sub-carriers are
always reserved as pilot for each symbol,

m
Ti

e
and it uses LS with interpolation and the
maximum likelihood in a rapidly changing
channel [19]) - Adopted
Carriers
15
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM – Interpolation Schemes
• Pilot symbols uniformly inserted into symbols according to
{ X p ( 0), X d ( 0)  X d ( Floor ( N d / N p )  1), X p (1), X d ( Floor ( N d / N p )), }

• Information on the exact locations of the pilot and data symbols as well as
the values of the pilot symbols are already available at the receiver.
•
• The estimated channel at pilot subcarriers for the LS estimation (no need
of prior knowledge of noise variance) is given as:
• Y p ( m)
ˆ
H p ( m)  m  0,1, , N p  1
X p ( m)
• Interpolation schemes
– linear interpolation,
– second-order interpolation,
– spline cubic interpolation
– time domain interpolation which are used in the one dimensional model to
extract channel information on the data sub-carriers Hd [18]. In [21, 23]
detailed information on the number of pilots used and how to located them as
optimal pilot design techniques are given. 16
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM - Simulation

Transmitter
I/Q I/Q
Channel Symbol OFDM Guard
coding / mapping modulation interval
interleaving (modulation) (IFFT)

OFDM spectrum for NFFT = 128, Nw in = 12, Nguard = 24, oversampling = 1

0110 010101001

power spectrum magnitude [dB]

10 N symbols
0
-10
1 OFDM symbol
-20
Receiver -30
-40 FFT-part
-50
Decoding / symbol de- -60 -40 OFDM -20 0 Guard
20 40 60
deinter- mapping demod. f [MHz] interval
time domain signal (baseband)
leaving (detection)
0.2 (FFT) removal
Channel 0.1 I/Q I/Q
impulse
Channel response:
est. Time sync. time
0

-0.1 imaginary
real
-0.2
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
17
200
CSNDSP 2008 sample nr.
 Simulation Parameters
Parameters Values

No. of Les 4
Transmitted optical power Ps 20.0 mW
Centre luminance intensity of LED 730 mcd 3
LEDs interval: 1cm

Field of view (FOV) 60o Photodetector

(3.5,3.5)m
surface area Ar 1 cm2 2

Height[m]
Lambert mode 0.6461 1
(1,3.5)m

Concentrator refractive index nr 1.5 (3.5,1)m

Photodetector responsivity 0.53 (A/W) 0

5
(1,1)m 2.5m

FFT size 256 4 5

Number of data subcarriers 128 3
3
4
2
Number of pilots 16, 32, 64 1
1
2

Cyclic prefix (CP) ratio 1/4 Width[m] 0 0 Length[m]

The radiation pattern is assumed to be

Lambertian

18
CSNDSP 2008
 Horizontal Illuminance Distribution

Distribution of horizantal illuminance [lx]

Number of LEDs
60 x 60 (4 set)
1400

1200

1000
Illuminance[lx]

800

600

400

200
5
4 5
3 4
2 3
2
1
1
0 0
y[m] x[m]

19
CSNDSP 2008
 Results - Error Performance for LOS optical wireless
OFDM link employing BPSK, QPSK and 16-QAM

0
OFDM over AWGN Channel
10
BPSK Simulation
BPSK Theory
QPSK Simulation
QPSK Theory
-1 16-QAM Simulation
10
16-QAM Theory

-2
SER

10

-3
10

-4
10
0 5 10 15 20
Eb/No(dB)

20
CSNDSP 2008
Results – Error performance for diffuse OW OFDM link with
QPSK & LS channel estimation for a number of pilot symbols
0
10
Npilot=16
Npilot=32
Npilot=64

-1
10
SER

-2
10

-3
10
0 5 10 15 20 25
E b/N0(dB)

21
CSNDSP 2008
 Conclusions

• Visible light LED’s was proposed for both lightening and

communication system
• OFDM technique employed to combat ISI due to the
multipath reflections
• Due to the variation of the optical channel impulse
response in OW links, pilot signals added and the
channel is estimated.
• We simulated the illumination to meet the ISO for lighting
and found the number of LEDs for the simulation
parameters.
• Performance of the system for both LOS and Diffuse link
for BPSK,QPSK and M-QAM was simulated.
22
CSNDSP 2008
Thank you!

23
CSNDSP 2008
 Inter-Symbol-Interference (ISI) due to Multi-Path
Reflections

Transmitted signal:

Received Signals:
Line-of-sight:

Reflected:

The symbols add

up on the channel Delays
 Distortion!

24
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM Symbols

 Group L data symbols into a block known as an OFDM symbol.

 An OFDM symbol lasts for a duration of T seconds, where T = LTs.
 Guard period > delay spread
 OFDM transmissions allow ISI within an OFDM symbol, but by
including a sufficiently large guard band, it is possible to guarantee that
there is no interference between subsequent OFDM symbols.

 The next task is to attempt to remove the ISI within each OFDM symbol

25
CSNDSP 2008
 Received LOS Power
Maximum_power = 1.2270
[dBm]
Minimum_power = -5.2891
[dBm] Distribution of Received Power [dBm]

2
Received Power [dBm]

-2

-4

-6
5
4 5
3 4
2 3
2
1 1
0 0
y[m] x[m]

26
CSNDSP 2008
 OFDM Systems

System FFT Number Channel Bandwidth Sample Symbol Data

Size Carriers Spacing MHz Rate Duration
kHz MHz sec Rate

Mbits/s
HyperLAN/2 64 52 312.5 16.25 20 3.2 6-54
4 0.8
802.11a 64 52 312.5 16.56 20 3.2 6-54
4 0.8

DVB-T 2048 1712 4.464 7.643 9.174 224 0.68-

1024 842 14.92
DAB 2048 1536 1.00 1.536 2.048 24/48/96 3.072
8192 msec
ADSL 256 (down) 36-127 4.3125 1.104 1.104 231.9 0.64-
64 (up) 7-28 8.192

27
CSNDSP 2008