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Electronics
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Visible Light Communication and Positioning
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Visible Light Communication and Positioning

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Microwave and Wireless Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2019) | Viewed by 35535

Printed Edition Available!
A printed edition of this Special Issue is available here.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Chen Gong

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electronic and Information Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
Interests: wireless communication; optical wireless communication; wireless big data; signal processing; storage networks

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Visible light communication (VLC) is an emerging area, and is extensively attracting interest from both academia and industrial fields. The potential large transmission bandwidth makes it a good candidate for future 5G/6G indoor communication networks. Due to the electromagnetic silence and limited transmission bandwidth characteristics, it is competitive for certain special applications. Moreover, due to the limited transmission and interference range, visible light media can be adopted for high-accuracy indoor positioning. Thanks to the recent developments of light emitting diodes (LEDs) and photoelectric conversion devices, low-cost communication system can foresee the wide deployment in daily use. Despite the abovementioned potential and recent great progress, there are still a number of open research issues that remain to be solved.

As one of the interdisciplinary technologies, VLC will cover optical antenna design, physical-layer transmission aspects, MAC and network layer protocols, as well as system integration and miniaturization. This Special Issue will cover, but is not limited to, the following scopes:

  • Optical antenna design for VLC
  • Channel modeling and characterization
  • Information theory for VLC
  • Channel estimation for VLC
  • Coding and modulation for VLC
  • Efficient signal processing for VLC
  • MIMO technologies for VLC
  • MAC protocols for VLC
  • Network-layer protocols for VLC
  • Cross-layer optimization for VLC
  • Visible light positioning
  • Security issues for VLC
  • VLC standardization

Prof. Dr. Chen Gong
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 173 KiB  
Editorial
Visible Light Communication and Positioning: Present and Future
by Chen Gong
Electronics 2019, 8(7), 788; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8070788 - 15 Jul 2019
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 2717
Abstract
Future wireless communication may extend its spectrum to visible light due to its potential large bandwidth [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

36 pages, 15288 KiB  
Article
Visible Light Communication System Based on Software Defined Radio: Performance Study of Intelligent Transportation and Indoor Applications
by Radek Martinek, Lukas Danys and Rene Jaros
Electronics 2019, 8(4), 433; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8040433 - 15 Apr 2019
Cited by 39 | Viewed by 6671
Abstract
In this paper, our first attempt at visible light communication system, based on software defined radio (SDR) and implemented in LabVIEW is introduced. This paper mainly focuses on two most commonly used types of LED lights, ceiling lights and LED car lamps/tail-lights. The [...] Read more.
In this paper, our first attempt at visible light communication system, based on software defined radio (SDR) and implemented in LabVIEW is introduced. This paper mainly focuses on two most commonly used types of LED lights, ceiling lights and LED car lamps/tail-lights. The primary focus of this study is to determine the basic parameters of real implementation of visible light communication (VLC) system, such as transmit speed, communication errors (bit-error ratio, error vector magnitude, energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratio) and highest reachable distance. This work focuses on testing various multistate quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM). We have used Skoda Octavia III tail-light and Phillips indoor ceiling light as transmitters and SI PIN Thorlabs photodetector as receiver. Testing method for each light was different. When testing ceiling light, we have focused on reachable distance for each M-QAM variant. On the other side, Octavia tail-light was tested in variable nature conditions (such as thermal turbulence, rain, fog) simulated in special testing box. This work will present our solution, measured parameters and possible weak spots, which will be adjusted in the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)
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15 pages, 2196 KiB  
Article
An Analysis of the Impact of LED Tilt on Visible Light Positioning Accuracy
by David Plets, Sander Bastiaens, Luc Martens and Wout Joseph
Electronics 2019, 8(4), 389; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8040389 - 01 Apr 2019
Cited by 26 | Viewed by 3417
Abstract
Whereas the impact of photodiode noise and reflections is heavily studied in Visible Light Positioning (VLP), an often underestimated deterioration of VLP accuracy is caused by tilt of the Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Small LED tilts may be hard to avoid and can [...] Read more.
Whereas the impact of photodiode noise and reflections is heavily studied in Visible Light Positioning (VLP), an often underestimated deterioration of VLP accuracy is caused by tilt of the Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Small LED tilts may be hard to avoid and can have a significant impact on the claimed centimeter-accuracy of VLP systems. This paper presents a Monte-Carlo-based simulation study of the impact of LED tilt on the accuracy of Received Signal Strength (RSS)-based VLP for different localization approaches. Results show that trilateration performs worse than (normalized) Least Squares algorithms, but mainly outside the LED square. Moreover, depending on inter-LED distance and LED height, median tilt-induced errors are in the range between 1 and 6 cm for small LED tilts, with errors scaling linearly with the LED tilt severity. Two methods are proposed to estimate and correct for LED tilts and their performance is compared. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)
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20 pages, 4326 KiB  
Article
Adaptive Power Allocation Scheme for Mobile NOMA Visible Light Communication System
by Zanyang Dong, Tao Shang, Qian Li and Tang Tang
Electronics 2019, 8(4), 381; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8040381 - 29 Mar 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3395
Abstract
Recently, due to its higher spectral efficiency and enhanced user experience, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been widely studied in visible light communication (VLC) systems. As a main concern in NOMA-VLC systems, the power allocation scheme greatly affects the tradeoff between the total [...] Read more.
Recently, due to its higher spectral efficiency and enhanced user experience, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been widely studied in visible light communication (VLC) systems. As a main concern in NOMA-VLC systems, the power allocation scheme greatly affects the tradeoff between the total achievable data rate and user fairness. In this context, our main aim in this work was to find a more balanced power allocation scheme. To this end, an adaptive power allocation scheme based on multi-attribute decision making (MADM), which flexibly chooses between conventional power allocation or inverse power allocation (IPA) and the optimal power allocation factor, has been proposed. The concept of IPA is put forward for the first time and proves to be beneficial to achieving a higher total achievable data rate at the cost of user fairness. Moreover, considering users’ mobility along certain trajectories, we derived a fitting model of the optimal power allocation factor. The feasibility of the proposed adaptive scheme was verified through simulation and the fitting model was approximated to be the sum of three Gaussian functions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)
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16 pages, 5184 KiB  
Article
Fingerprint-Based Indoor Positioning System Using Visible Light Communication—A Novel Method for Multipath Reflections
by Huy Q. Tran and Cheolkeun Ha
Electronics 2019, 8(1), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8010063 - 06 Jan 2019
Cited by 41 | Viewed by 4937
Abstract
A highly accurate indoor positioning under the effect of multipath reflections has been a prominent challenge for recent research. This paper proposes a novel indoor visible light communication (VLC) positioning model by connecting k-nearest neighbors (kNN) and random forest (RF) algorithms for reflective [...] Read more.
A highly accurate indoor positioning under the effect of multipath reflections has been a prominent challenge for recent research. This paper proposes a novel indoor visible light communication (VLC) positioning model by connecting k-nearest neighbors (kNN) and random forest (RF) algorithms for reflective environments, namely, kNN-RF. In this fingerprint-based model, we first adopt kNN as a powerful solution to expand the number of input features for RF. Next, the importance rate of these features is ranked and the least effective one(s) may be removed to reduce the computation effort. Next, the training process using the RF algorithm is conducted. Finally, the estimation process is utilized to discover the final estimated position. Our simulation results show that this new approach improved the positioning accuracy, making it nearly five times better than other popular kNN algorithms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)
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18 pages, 4565 KiB  
Article
Feedforward Control Based on Error and Disturbance Observation for the CCD and Fiber-Optic Gyroscope-Based Mobile Optoelectronic Tracking System
by Yong Luo, Wei Ren, Yongmei Huang, Qiunong He, Qiongyan Wu, Xi Zhou and Yao Mao
Electronics 2018, 7(10), 223; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7100223 - 29 Sep 2018
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3165
Abstract
In the mobile optoelectronic tracking system (MOTS) based on charge-coupled device (CCD) and fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG), the tracking performance (TP) and anti-disturbance ability (ADA) characterized by boresight error are of equal importance. Generally, the position tracking loop, limited by the image integration time [...] Read more.
In the mobile optoelectronic tracking system (MOTS) based on charge-coupled device (CCD) and fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG), the tracking performance (TP) and anti-disturbance ability (ADA) characterized by boresight error are of equal importance. Generally, the position tracking loop, limited by the image integration time of CCD, would be subject to a non-negligible delay and low-sampling rate, which could not minimize the boresight error. Although the FOG-based velocity loop could enhance the ADA of the system, it is still insufficient in the case of some uncertain disturbances. In this paper, a feedforward control method based on the results of error and disturbance observation was proposed. The error observer (EOB) based on the CCD data and model output essentially combined the low-frequency tracking feedforward and closed-loop disturbance observer (DOB), which could simultaneously enhance the low-frequency TP and ADA. In addition, in view of the poor low-frequency performance of the FOG due to drift and noise that may result in the inaccuracy of the observed low-frequency disturbance, the FOG-based DOB was used to improve the relatively high-frequency ADA. The proposed method could make EOB and DOB complementary and help to obtain a high-precision MOTS, for in practical engineering, we give more attention to the low-frequency TP and full-band ADA. Simulations and experiments demonstrated that the proposed method was valid and had a much better performance than the traditional velocity and position double-loop control (VPDC). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)
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15 pages, 6397 KiB  
Article
Color-Independent Visible Light Communications Based on Color Space: State of the Art and Potentials
by Tae-Ho Kwon, Jai-Eun Kim, Youn-Hee Kim and Ki-Doo Kim
Electronics 2018, 7(9), 190; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7090190 - 10 Sep 2018
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5361
Abstract
Color independency is an important factor in visible light communication (VLC) systems. This paper aims to review and summarize recent achievements in color-independent visible light communication based on color space, with the main focus being on color-space-based modulation (CSBM), termed as generalized color [...] Read more.
Color independency is an important factor in visible light communication (VLC) systems. This paper aims to review and summarize recent achievements in color-independent visible light communication based on color space, with the main focus being on color-space-based modulation (CSBM), termed as generalized color modulation (GCM), which allows VLC to adapt to any target color. The main advantages of GCM are its color independency, reasonable bit error rate (BER) performance during color variation, and dimming control. We also address our past research works that aimed to achieve a color-independent visual MIMO system by incorporating the advantages of GCM, which can lead to higher data rates over longer distances and improved performance, using image processing in addition to color independency. Finally, two case studies are introduced to demonstrate the potential applicability of a color-independent visual-MIMO system using color-space-based modulation techniques. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)
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11 pages, 3076 KiB  
Article
Characterization of Light-To-Frequency Converter for Visible Light Communication Systems
by Roger Alexander Martínez Ciro, Francisco Eugenio López Giraldo, Andrés Felipe Betancur Perez and Martín Luna Rivera
Electronics 2018, 7(9), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7090165 - 28 Aug 2018
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4363
Abstract
PIN (positive intrinsic negative) photodiodes and analog-to-digital converters (ADC) are commonly used on visible light communication (VLC) receivers in order to retrieve the data on detected signals. In this paper, a visible light communication receiver based on a light to frequency converter (LTF) [...] Read more.
PIN (positive intrinsic negative) photodiodes and analog-to-digital converters (ADC) are commonly used on visible light communication (VLC) receivers in order to retrieve the data on detected signals. In this paper, a visible light communication receiver based on a light to frequency converter (LTF) is proposed. We characterized the LTF and derived an equation for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation in terms of its input optical power, and the frequency of the output periodic signal. The experiments show that the periodic signal of the LTF converter has a maximum output frequency of 600 kHz at a distance of 6.2 cm. In this setup, measured SNR reached 18.75 dB, while the lowest obtained SNR with 1.1 m length was roughly −35.1 dB. The results obtained suggest that a bit rate of 150 kbps can be achieved with an on-off keying (OOK) modulation format. We analyzed the results and discuss the advantages and limitations of the LTF converter for optical wireless communication purposes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visible Light Communication and Positioning)
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