Evaluation of Visible Light Communication system performance in the presence of sunlight irradiance

The paper reports on an evaluation of the impact of VLC system performance owing to sunlight irradiance over the year for two representative locations, Cairo - Egypt and Berlin - Germany. The evaluation is extended to treat the impact of cloud coverage on system performance. The average system SNR, BER and achievable data rate are estimated for the most common surfaces used within indoor environments. A comparative analysis of the performance when shot noise due to sunlight is assumed to follow Gaussian statistics is also presented. The impact of LED panel placement on system performance has been conducted. The analysis yields the LED placement that provides the optimum SNR, fulfils the lighting specifications as governed by standards and minimises the fluctuation in the average SNR across the room to assure consistent provisioning. The analysis considers representative room shapes, room sizes, LED specification, evaluation workplace, LED panel size over different metrological conditions.