Biased Beamforming for Multi-LED OFDM in Visible Light Communications

This paper proposes a novel concept of biased beamforming to explore the full potential of multicarrier visible light communication (VLC) systems equipped with multiple light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Biased beamforming requires joint optimization of both: a direct current bias on each LED and a beamforming vector on each subcarrier. We first analyze the impact of clipping in multi-LED multicarrier systems, before carrying out the joint optimization of beamforming and biasing. We derive the optimal biased beamforming in closed form, along with several critical insights that are helpful for practical systems. The proposed biased beamforming strategy outperforms existing solutions, as shown by our simulation results.