In this paper, a novel cooperative transmission and reception scheme in Visible Light Communications (VLC) is proposed and evaluated. This new scheme provides improvements and reliability in large indoor scenarios, such as corridors, laboratories, shops or conference rooms, where the coverage needs to be obtained by using different access points when VLC is used. The main idea behind the proposal is a simple cooperative transmission scheme where the receiver terminal will obtain the signal from different access points at the same time. This proposal outperforms traditional VLC schemes, especially in Non-Line-of-Sight reception where around 3 dB of gain with respect to the traditional schemes can be obtained for unoptimized parameters and larger than 3 dB could be easily achieved. The cooperation is studied in terms of the percentage of light coming from the main access point and a parameter called sidelobes' amplitude level. The performance is evaluated according to the location into the atto-cell 1 .

Abstract-Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a promising technology to achieve high data rates in heterogeneous scenarios. However, VLC strongly depends on the existence of a Line-of-Sight (LoS) link between transmitter and receiver to guarantee a good data rate performance, which is often a condition that is difficult to satisfy in practice. In this paper, a novel cooperative multicarrier transmission scheme is proposed, where neighboring attocells smartly cooperate to decrease the probability of blockage in the LoS link. This approach is compared to single-cell transmission schemes, obtaining notable gains in both received Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio and cell data rate when blockage of the LoS link occurs towards the nearest Base Station.

Visible light communications (VLC) have received significant attention as a way of moving part of the saturated indoor wireless traffic to the wide and unregulated visible optical spectrum. Nowadays, VLC are considered as a suitable technology, for several applications such as high-rate data transmission, supporting internet of things communications or positioning. The signal processing originally derived from radio-frequency (RF) systems such as cooperative or precoding schemes can be applied to VLC. However, its implementation is not straightforward. Furthermore, unlike RF transmission, VLC present a predominant line-of-sight link, although a weak non-LoS component may appear due to the reflection of the light on walls, floor, ceiling and nearby objects. Blocking effects may compromise the performance of the aforementioned transmission schemes. There exist several surveys in the literature focused on VLC and its applications, but the management of the shadowing and interference in VLC requires a comprehensive study. To fill this gap, this work introduces the implementation of cooperative and precoding schemes to VLC, while remarking their benefits and drawbacks for overcoming the shadowing effects. After that, the combination of both cooperative and precoding schemes is analyzed as a way of providing resilient VLC networks. Finally, we propose several open issues that the cooperative and precoding schemes must face in order to provide satisfactory VLC performance in indoor scenarios.

In this paper we investigate a novel channel estimation method for multiple-input and single-output (MISO) systems in visible light communication (VLC). Direct current biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) is commonly used in VLC where half of the available subcarriers are spent to guarantee a real-valued output after the inverse fast Fourier transform operation. Besides, dedicated subcarriers are typically used for channel estimation (CE), thus, many resources are wasted and the spectral efficiency is degraded. We propose a superimposed training approach for CE in MISO DCO-OFDM VLC scenarios. Analytical expressions of mean squared error (MSE) and spectral efficiency are derived when the least squares estimator is considered. This analysis is valid for outdoor and indoor scenarios. For the channel estimation error, simulation results of MSE show a perfect match with analytical expressions. Moreover, results prove that this technique guarantees a larger spectral efficiency than previous schemes where dedicated pilots were used. Finally, the optimal data power allocation factor is also analytically derived.

Visible light communication (VLC) often suffers from line-of-sight path blockages and high levels of intercell interference. Thus, the analysis and design of cooperation techniques become crucial to address these key impairments. This paper studies the performance of different resource allocation schemes that are suitable for multi-cell cooperative transmission when tri-and tetra-chromatic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and optical orthogonal frequency-division multiple access are utilized. Firstly, guidelines are derived for maintaining the same spatial distribution of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) in every sector of the multi-cell environment in case of stand-alone (non-cooperative) and cooperative transmission. Secondly, the possible resource allocation configurations for both stand-alone and cooperative transmission modes are identified for different LED types and available orthogonal resources (i.e., frequency sub-bands per color and sectors per cell). Finally, the data rate gain of the multiple resource allocation configurations are also analyzed, while verifying the illumination constraints. The obtained results confirm that the proper design of cooperative transmission configurations will be of paramount importance to provide reliable wireless link in ultra-dense VLC deployments.

Visible light communication (VLC) is capable of satisfying the escalating data rate demand in indoor scenarios. The lighting infrastructure may also be exploited in the downlink of a wireless local area network (WLAN), where light-emitting diodes are used for transmitting information. The backhaul of VLC access points (APs) constitutes a potential bottleneck in WLANs, especially in large rooms where the number of APs is high. Thus, an alternative reflection-based cooperative wireless system concept is proposed, where no wired connections are required for connecting the APs. Then, its data rate analysis is developed based on the signal-to-noise ratio attained. The results show that the performance of the cooperative wireless system advocated closely approximates the performance of the traditional wired backhaul. Finally, we demonstrate by using Jain's index of fairness that the proposed scheme provides fair coverage quality for all users.INDEX TERMS Cooperative transmission, joint transmission, relaying techniques, visible light communication.

Mobile communications are today widespread and contribute to the development of our society. Everyday new devices are including some means of wireless transmission, that is becoming ubiquitous with the Internet of Things (IoT). These systems are standardized by international organizations such as the IEEE, 3GPP or ETSI among others. Even though the knowledge of wireless standards is key to the understanding of these systems, wireless communications are quite often taught in Engineering degrees in a traditional way, without much emphasis on the standardization. Moreover, strong focus is often placed on the theoretical performance analysis rather than on practical implementation aspects. In contrast, most of the current applications make an intensive use of mobile data and the global users' satisfaction is highly correlated with the mobile data throughput. Thus, modern wireless engineers need to have a deep insight on the standards that define the mobile transmission systems, and this knowledge is not acquired following the traditional theoretical teaching schemes. In this paper, a new learning approach is described. This novel paradigm is based on a new flexible hardware/software platform (FRAMED-SOFT) that is also detailed. Although the paper is focused on two wireless standards, namely Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), the work here discussed can be easily extended to other standards of interest, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and beyond, WiFi or WiMAX.

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