A positioning compatible multi-service transmission system based on the integration of VLC and PLC

Abstract

As the shortage of spectrum is becoming a serious problem to the wireless communication, visible light communication (VLC) is attracting widespread attention. However, the accession to the backbone network is likely to completely modify the communication network, thus leading to a great cost. Fortunately, the technology of power line communication (PLC) is a perfect match to VLC, which provides power supply and connection for VLC to the backbone network. In this paper, we take an integration of VLC and PLC into consideration and mainly focus on a communication framework with multifunction. In the case of not making a big modification to the origin network, a direct re-transmission concept is considered and two implementation schemes which differ in frequency and time domain are proposed. A demonstration platform is built which suggests that both schemes have the ability to support positioning and multi-service transmission in a high data rate with no big modification of current power line network.Index Terms-Power line communication (PLC), visible light communication (VLC), indoor positioning, multi-service, orthorgonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) 978-1-4799-5344-8/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

On Power Line Positioning Systems

“…Even though the identity can be assigned directly for each light bulb, it can also be set in a coordinate fashion by the PLC system. Utilizing the PLC–VLC hybrid channel to emit the positioning beacons traveling in the power lines is also possible [ 105 ].…”

Communication systems of high‐speed railway: A survey

“…Since then, this hybrid system has been investigated by many researchers in several aspects 65,111‐114 . Motivated by adopting the concepts of the RF communications for the hybrid PLC/VLC system, the authors in Reference 114 has investigated the implementation of MIMO and relaying techniques for this system. A novel and cost‐effective scheme for the cooperative PLC/VLC was proposed in Reference 113.…”

“…The results showed that the required modification to the current infrastructure is less than the other schemes and simplifies the complexity of the network protocol of VLC. Frequency‐domain and time‐domain schemes were proposed in Reference 114 for the positioning purpose. The authors also considered a direct retransmission concept in order to reduce the modifications to the origin network.…”