2017 IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC Workshops)

Adaptive Transmission for MIMO VLC Systems

Xinyue Guo, Yang Guo, Shuangshuang Li

School of Optical-Electrical and Computing Engineering,
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

Abstract—We propose and experimentally demonstrate an without adaptive transmission under the power constraints
adaptive transmission technique for MIMO VLC systems. In and the same BER level.
order to maximize the channel capacity, adaptive transmission
is realized by power and bit allocation on de-correlated MIMO II. ADAPTIVE TRANSMISION FOR MIMO SYSTEMS
channels separately. Experimental results confirm the The block diagrams of the proposed adaptive MIMO
performance improvement when applying the adaptive
VLC system are shown in Fig.1, where the detailed signal
transmission to the spatial multiplexing and the space-time
coding MIMO systems.
processing at transmitter and receiver is presented. Without
loss of generality, a simple MIMO configuration with two
Keywords—adaptive transmission; OFDM; MIMO; VLC LEDs and two photodiodes (PDs) is considered as an
example in this paper.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the system, channel is divided by multiple sub-
Visible light communication (VLC) based on white light channels by using OFDM modulation. In such a way, inter-
emitting diodes (LEDs) has recently emerged as a symbol interference is eliminated and transmission
complementary wireless communication technology to parameters can be optimized to adapt to each sub-channel.
traditional radio frequency (RF) communications. VLC Channel state information (CSI) is the required feedback
offers several advantages, including cost effectiveness, from the receiver to the transmitter. According to the CSI,
licensing free, immunity to electromagnetic interference, the modulation orders and the transmitted power are
and high security. The most severe challenge in achieving adjusted to maximize the channel capacity.
high-speed VLC transmission is its limited modulation
bandwidth, where signals modulated at high frequencies are
seriously attenuated due to the physical property of LEDs.
Therefore, it is especially crucial to improve the spectral
efficiency over such limited and non-flat bandwidth for
indoor VLC system [1][2].
It is well-known that adaptive transmission techniques
are efficient ways to improve the system performance,
where transmission parameters are optimized to adapt to the
channel [3][4]. In our previous work, we have proposed and
demonstrated an adaptive transmission technique combing
with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
modulation in a single input single output (SISO) VLC
system[5]. Based on the idea of maximizing the channel
capacity, power and bits are jointly allocated for each sub-
carrier under the constraints of the total power and the given
target BER. Compared with the general OFDM VLC system,
experimental results show that the spectral efficiency can be
increased by 30% at the same bit error rate (BER) level over
12.5MHz bandwidth.
In this paper, we extend our proposed adaptive Fig.1. Signal processing for transmitter and the receiver.
transmission technique to multiple input multiple output In MIMO VLC channel, crosstalk exists among co-
(MIMO) VLC system. As two mainstream MIMO schemes, located channels as light from a single transmitter may reach
the space-time coding is valid for improving the reliability multiple receivers. Therefore, the key step is to de-correlate
while the spatial multiplexing increases the data rate greatly the co-located MIMO channel firstly. In such a way, the
without additional need of frequency resources[6][7]. crosstalk MIMO channel can be equivalent to several
Consequently, the applications of the adaptive transmission parallel SISO channels.
to both kinds of MIMO VLC system are studied in this
paper. Experimental results confirm that higher channel In the spatial multiplexing MIMO system, signals are
capacity can be achieved compared with the MIMO system transmitted from two LEDs simultaneously over one symbol

978-1-5386-6403-2/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 2017 IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC Workshops)

period. Spatial multiplexing MIMO channel can be de-
correlated based on the zero-forcing (ZF) algorithm, which
is expressed as
H 1Y  X  H 1N
where 1 is the matrix inversion, Y , X and N represent
the vectors of received signals, transmitted signals and
noises respectively. H   h11 h12  stands for the crosstalk
h  oscilloscope (OSC). The signal peak-to-peak voltage is set
 21 h22 
channel matrix, where hij represents the channel gain from
the ith LED to the jth PD.
While in the space-time coding MIMO system, signals
are transmitted from two LEDs over two symbol periods. As
a result, signals received from two PDs and two symbol
periods are combined together. Space-time coding MIMO
channel can easily be de-correlated by simple matrix
transformation since the space-time codes are designed
orthogonally, which can be given by [8]
H1H Y1  H 2H Y2  (H1H H1  H 2H H 2 ) X  H1H N1   H 2H N 2
where Y j and N j denote the vectors of received signals and
noises from two symbol periods at the jth receiver.
 h h2  stands for the orthogonal channel matrix at
Experimentally demonstration is set up to examine the
performance of the adaptive MIMO VLC system as shown
in Fig.2. In the experiments, signals are generated by an
arbitrary function generator (AFG). Direct current (DC)
(1) supplied by AFG is also added to ensure that the transmitted
signals are positive. Then the mixed signals are transmitted
through LEDs in the form of optical power. At the receiver,
the optical signals are focused on the PD and converted into
electrical signals, which are recorded by a high-speed digital
to 2.5 V with 2.0 V DC offset. We use two off-the-shelf red
light LEDs (Cree XLamp XP-E) as the transmitters. We use
two PD modules (Hamamatsu C12702-11) as receivers.
The data is transmitted over the bandwidth ranged from 0 to
12.5MHz.
(2)
Fig.2. Experimental setup for the adaptive MIMO VLC system.
10
-1

H  1j
j    16QAM

h2 j  h1  4QAM
8QAM

the jth receiver. H and  express the matrix Hermitian -2
10
transpose and conjugation respectively, and the result of BERT =0.003 BER@3.8E-3
BER

H Hj H j is diagonal. BERT =0.002

-3
10 BERT =0.001
Then the channel capacity maximization can be
formulated separately for each SISO channel under the with adaptive transmission

power constraint, where more power is allocated to the sub- 10

-4

3
without adaptive transmission
3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5
channels with larger signal to noise ratio (SNR). The Spectral efficiency (bit/s/Hz)
optimization problem is written as Fig.3. BER versus spectal efficiency with and without an adaptive
transmission for spatial multiplexing MIMO VLC system.
 
M M
max  Ci  max  log 1  Pi SNRi (3)
-1
P1 PM P1 PM 10
i 1 i 1
16QAM
8QAM
M
subject to
 Pi  M Pi  0
i 1
10
-2
4QAM
BER

where M is the number of sub-channels and Pi denotes the BER@3.8E-3

BERT =0.003

power allocated on ith sub-channel. SNR on each sub- 10

-3 BERT =0.002

channel can be easily calculated with the feedback CSI BERT =0.001

according to (1) or (2). without adaptive transmission

-4 with adaptive transmission
10
Afterwards, bit allocations are applied to different sub- 1.5 2 2.5
Spectral efficiency (bit/s/Hz)
3 3.5

channels to achieve the maximum channel capacity under

the constraint of a given target BER. The solution of the Fig.4. BER versus spectal efficiency with and without an adaptive
transmission for space-time coding MIMO VLC system.
modulation order can be obtained by
Spectral efficiency performance comparisons between
1.5 Pi SNRi (4) MIMO VLC systems with and without adaptive
Qi  1 
log(5 BERT ) transmission are represented in Fig.3 and Fig.4, where two
MIMO schemes spatial multiplexing and space-time coding
where Qi is the modulation order on ith sub-channel and
are adopted respectively. As shown, the blue curve stands
BERT represent the target BER. Finally the modulation for the spectral efficiency and BER results of the system
orders should be further rounded down to the nearest integer without adaptive transmission, where each point represents
which is the powers of 2. the performance with a certain modulation type. The red
 2017 IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC Workshops)

curve depicts BER versus spectral efficiency for the system
with adaptive transmission and each point describes the
performance based on a certain target BER. Considering the
7% pre-forward-error-correction threshold of 3.8×10-3, the
target BERs are set as 0.001, 0.002 and 0.003 in the
experiments. Besides, channel correlation is also considered
an important indicator in MIMO VLC system, which can be
evaluated by the channel matrix condition number [5]. Once
channel is highly correlated, i.e., channel gains between
transmitters and receivers are similar with each other, it
means only minor diversity gains are enabled. Here, the
find that the spectral efficiency of the spatial multiplexing
MIMO VLC is higher when the channel matrix condition
number is low. This implies that the spatial multiplexing
benefits from the multiplexing gains when the channel
correlation is low. However, with the increasing of the
channel correlation, the space-time coding MIMO VLC
system is preferred because of its robustness to channel
correlation.
3.2

Spectral efficiency (bits/s/Hz)

3.1
measured channel matrix condition number is equal to 2.6 in
3
the experiments, which is averaged over all the sub-channels
divided by the OFDM modulation. 2.9

2.8
In the experiments, the data rates of 53.6Mbit/s, 2.7
56.6Mbit/s and 58.8Mbit/s for adaptive spatial multiplexing with adatptive transmission (BERT =0.001)
2.6
MIMO VLC system and the data rates of 37.3Mbit/s, with adatptive transmission (BERT =0.003)
38.6Mbit/s and 40.1Mbit/s for adaptive space-coding 2.5
2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5
Channel matrix condition number
MIMO VLC system are realized when the target BERs are
equal to 0.001, 0.002 and 0.003 respectively. As shown in Fig.5. Channel matrix condition number versus spectal efficiency for
Fig.3 and Fig.4, the MIMO VLC system with adaptive space-time coding MIMO VLC system.
transmission achieves much higher spectral efficiency under
5
the same BER level. Experimental results also show that the
BER performance is improved by the adaptive transmission, 4.5

Spectral efficiency (bit/s/Hz)

which can be adjusted by setting the target BER. While the 4

BER performance is much worse in the system without 3.5

adaptive transmission, even in the 4QAM modulated system. 3

Such superior performance profits from two aspects, one is 2.5

that more data is transmitted on those sub-channels with 2

higher SNRs, the other is that data is disabled to be
transmitted on the sub-channels with very low SNRs. Note
that the real system BER is a little different from the target
BER in the adaptive transmission system. The reason is that
the modulation order has to be rounded down to the nearest
integer which is the powers of 2. Besides, the computation
of the SNR depends on the CSI, which is provided by the
channel estimation at the receiver and the estimation error is
unavoidable.
In Fig.5 and Fig.6, spectral efficiencies of the adaptive
transmission systems with different channel matrix
condition numbers are represented, where the target BER is
set as 0.001 and 0.003. In Fig.5, spectral efficiencies change
little and data rates are kept around 37Mbit/s and 40Mbit/s
with the target BERs equal to 0.001 and 0.003 when the
channel matrix condition number is increased. It proves that
the space-time coding is robust to channel correlation and is
more reliable under different channel conditions. However,
spectral efficiency decreases rapidly with the increasing of
the channel matrix condition number when the spatial
multiplexing scheme is adopted. The data rates of 54Mbit/s
and 59Mbit/s related to the two different target BERs are
achieved when the channel matrix condition number is
equals to 2.6; while only half data rates transmissions can be
realized when the channel matrix condition number is
increased to 6.3. This is because the channel noise would be
enhanced by using the ZF algorithm when the channel is
highly correlated. Thus, in order to maintain the BER
performance, lower modulation orders are allocated due to
the lower SNRs. Compared the two MIMO schemes, we
with adatptive transmission (BERT =0.001)
1.5 with adatptive transmission (BERT =0.003)
2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5
Channel matrix condition number
Fig.6. Channel matrix condition number versus spectal efficiency for
spatial multiplexing MIMO VLC system.
III. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, adaptive transmission technique based on
the idea of maximizing the channel capacity for MIMO
VLC system are proposed, which is realized by power and
bit allocation on the de-correlated MIMO channels.
Experimental results validate that spectral efficiency can be
greatly increased by the adaptive transmission technique.
However, performance improvements are gained at the cost
of the feedback. Therefore, the adaptive transmission
technique is more suitable for the static indoor VLC
applications. Future work includes the research of adaptive
transmission technique with less feedback information.
ACKNOLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (No. 61501296).
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