Asymmetrical Hybrid Optical OFDM for Visible Light Communications With Dimming Control

This letter proposes an asymmetrical hybrid optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (AHO-OFDM) scheme for dimmable visible light communication systems. In the proposed scheme, either asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) or pulse-amplitude-modulated discrete multitone (PAM-DMT) signal is inverted and then both the signals are combined for transmission, where pulsewidth modulation is no longer required for dimming control. The power of ACO-OFDM and PAM-DMT signals is adjusted so that the amplitude of the combined AHO-OFDM signal is asymmetrical, which could utilize all the available subcarriers as well as the entire dynamic range of light-emitting diodes with various dimming levels. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme could achieve a wide dimming range with a small throughput fluctuation.