AbstractIn this paper, a 16-QAM orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with companding technique is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in a high-speed visible laser light communication setup with low-cost 450 nm blue-light laser diode. Companding technique is used to reduce the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the OFDM signal. The experimental results show a successfully achieved 2.5 Gb/s under 5 m free space transmission and a PAPR reduction of about 3.2 dB at a fixed complementary cumulative distribution function of 10–3 when compared with the regular one without any technique.