Modified OFDM/OQAM for Personal Optical Wireless with Direct Detection

Personal optical wireless (POW) refers to use of free-space propagation of light for short range communications in an indoor context. POW offers several advantages over radio technologies, making it an attractive solution for home networks. Orthogonal modulations such as OFDM are currently used in many radio transmission standards. Among these modulations, OFDM/OQAM is an interesting alternative to classical OFDM modulation, as it does not require the use of guard interval and it has an optimal spectral efficiency. In this paper, with a modified scheme adaptable to optical system constraints, we investigate the combination of OFDM/OQAM and POW technology over multipath optical wireless channels. Using intensity modulation and direct detection, we show that our modified OFDM/OQAM system increases the bit rate of POW communications and mitigates the effects of inter symbol interference (ISI) due to optical light reflections.