Noise Mitigation Methods for Digital Visible Light Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces two novel noise mitigation techniques for digital visible light communication systems, significantly reducing interference from ambient light sources and improving bit error rates through waveform subtraction and active noise control-inspired methods.

Contribution

It presents two innovative noise reduction methods specifically designed for VLC systems, including waveform subtraction and an ANC-inspired approach with an additional photodiode.

Findings

Both methods improve BER performance over conventional receivers.

The ANC-inspired approach outperforms waveform subtraction in all tested scenarios.

Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed noise mitigation techniques.

Abstract

Visible Light Communication (VLC) using Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) has gained attention due to its low power consumption, long lifetime, and fast response. However, VLC suffers from optical noise generated by ambient light sources such as fluorescent lamps, which leads to waveform distortion and increased bit error rates (BER). In this paper, we propose two noise reduction methods for Digital Visible Light Communication (DVLC) systems. The first method exploits the periodic nature of interference caused by AC-powered-line illumination and reduces interference by subtracting sampled noise waveforms from the received signal. Second, inspired by Active Noise Control (ANC) techniques, an additional photodiode is introduced for noise reception, and subtraction circuits are employed to attenuate noise in real time. Experimental results show that both methods improve BER performance compared with conventional receivers, with the ANC-inspired approach achieving superior performance under all tested conditions.