Comparison of Fourier and Trigonometric Transform based Multicarrier Modulations for Visible Light Communication

Abstract

It is predicted that the radio frequency spectrum will be insufficient in the near future due to the increase in wireless data. Visible Light Communication (VLC) is an alternative solution, which promises high speeds. Similar to other wireless communication systems, VLC systems prefer Multicarrier Modulation (MCM), but the signals are converted to be real and unipolar before transmission for optical communication. In this paper, two optical MCM groups that utilize Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) and Discrete Trigonometric Transform (DTT) are questioned with respect to Bit Error Rate (BER), spectral efficiency and complexity. DFT based techniques use complex mapped signals together with their Hermitian symmetries to obtain real output signals, while DTT based techniques already output real signals when the input signal is real mapped. It is seen that DFT based techniques have lower BERs because of used mapping. DTT based techniques improve spectral efficiency, but they are limited to real mappings with higher error rates. For both transformations, the real signals are made unipolar by adding a bias (DCO-MCM), by asymmetrically clipping (ACO-MCM) or by sending positive and negative values separately (UnO-MCM). It is shown that, adding a dc bias (DCO-MCM) increases BERs, where ACO-MCM and UnO-MCM have close performances with lower BERs.