Discrete multitone transmission (DMT) is a useful approach to cope with the dispersive nature of VLC indoor channels. In such environments, the dispersion occurs either due to the LED in combination with its driver and or the multipath propagation channel. In this paper, we consider the impact of both types of dispersions on the bit error rate performance of a DMT based Li-Fi system. However, the main goal of this work is to compare the DMT scheme results with the transmission strategies employing frequency domain equalization. Here, we distinguish between pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM), partial-response coding, single-subcarrier (SSC) modulation, and "carrier-less amplitude and phase" (CAP) modulation. Keywords: visible light communication (VLC), Li-Fi, orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM), discrete multitone transmission (DMT), block transmission, frequency domain equalization (FDE), wireless infrared (IR) transmission, polymer optical fiber (POF) communication, DC-balanced codes, partial-response coding
INTRODUCTIONVisible light communication (VLC) uses the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to transmit data. It has become more and more attractive, since the LED lighting sources in homes, workplaces, factories or streets can additionally be used for wireless communication. Meanwhile, Li-Fi is an accepted term to describe this Wi-Fi analogy.In this work, we focus on the comparison of suitable transmission schemes for VLC based Li-Fi systems. Specifically, we consider only transmission schemes which ensure a DC-balance and thus a constant, data independent brightness, or schemes which can be easily combined with DC-balanced line codes. In order to take into account the bandwidth limitation caused by the LED in combination with its driver, we employ a Gaussian low-pass filter model at the transmitter. We do not claim that this model is generally valid, but the measurement results presented in [1] suggest rather a steep than a gradually roll-off beyond the upper cut-off frequency, which is said to be between 60 MHz and 180 MHz for a common high-power phosphorescent white-light LED with an optimized driver [1]. We also consider the effect of multipath propagation, if several spatially separated LEDs are used for illumination. Here we use simulated impulse responses, where high order diffuse reflections have been also taken into account.Discrete multitone transmission (DMT) is a promising approach to cope with the bandwidth limitation of the LED/LED-driver combo [2, 3]. Here we consider DC-biased DMT, since it inherently provides a DC-balance. DMT can be interpreted as a real valued variant of orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM), where no quadrature up-conversion takes place after the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) and digital-to-analog conversion at the transmitter. For VLC, it is impossible to modulate the field of a pair of sinusoidal high frequency (optical) carriers with a 90 • phase shift, since the LED-light source is strongly non-coherent. The optical field ap...