Hybrid PLC-VLC based on ACO-OFDM

Abstract

The recent successful development and standardization of the power line communication (PLC) (ITUT G.9960/61, CENELEC EN50065-1, IEEE 1901) and visible light communications (VLC) (IEEE 802.15.7), has resulted in lot of research interest in consideration to the integration of the PLC and VLC technologies. In addition, these technologies present the advantage related to cost effectiveness as a strong research motivation. In this paper, based on the positive aspect of VLC technology, we exploit the Hermitian symmetry to design a hybrid system combining PLC and VLC technologies using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). Asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) is employed in VLC and investigated when combined with PSK-OFDM (used in PLC). The proposed hybrid PLC-VLC system in this paper takes advantage of the inherent nulling feature of the ACO-OFDM to mitigate impulsive noise that is present in the PLC channel, where the optimal threshold, Tc to combat the impulse is investigated through simulations. While on the other hand taking advantage of the fact that both DCO-OFDM and PSK-OFDM employ the FFT, to achieve a simplified system.