Performance of indoor optical femtocell by visible light communication

• Published in: Optics communications Vol. 298-299; pp. 59 - 66
• Main Authors: Cui, Kaiyun, Quan, Jinguo, Xu, Zhengyuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.07.2013
• Subjects: Cellular; Cellular communication; Computer simulation; Dimming; Indoor; Interference; Modulation; Optical femtocell; Variable-PPM; Visible light communication; Wavelength division; Dimming; Variable-PPM; Optical femtocell; Visible light communication
• ISSN: 0030-4018; 1873-0310
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2013.02.018

Femotocell has been proposed and deployed to improve the indoor coverage and capacity of a cellular network. One big challenge in its deployment is the interference between the macrocell and femtocell cellular networks. In this paper we propose a new physical layer for the implementation of indoor femtocells – optical femtocells by LED-based visible light communication. A general system structure of the indoor optical femtocell network is first introduced. A combined wavelength division and code division multiple access scheme is proposed to differentiate cells and multiple users within a cell. This scheme coupled with directional beaming characteristics of the LEDs helps to mitigate intercell interference and intracell inference. The communication performance adopting the dimming compatible variable-PPM modulation suggested by the IEEE standard is analyzed. Monte-Carlo simulation is then carried out to reveal the system performance numerically under typical system settings and effects of various parameters.