Experimental validation of indoor relay-assisted visible light communications for a last-meter access network

Abstract

This paper provides experimental results for a relay-assisted visible light communications (VLC) link usinga white light-emitting diode (LED) for a last-meter access network. We demonstrate that a relay-based VLCscheme improves the system performance, especially for link spans longer than 5 meters, in the presence ofblocking and shadowing by redirecting the transmitted signal. We also demonstrate a multiband carrier-lessamplitude and phase modulation (m-CAP) VLC link where the decode-and-forward (DF) relay scheme offersimprovement in the data rate by 25% and 60% when compared to the amplify-and-forward (AF) relay-basedlink and single VLC link over a 7 m transmission distance respectively.