MBER Combining for MIMO VLC With User Mobility and Imperfect CSI

Visible light communication (VLC) has emerged as a green, low-cost, and secure supplement for existing radio frequency (RF) based systems. Although promising, the performance of VLC based systems is limited by several impairments, which degrade the achievable bit error-rate (BER) performance, viz. variations in channel-gain due to user-mobility, and channel-estimation error. Hence, in this letter, the bit error rate (BER) of maximal ratio combining is quantified over a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) VLC system, while considering the aforementioned impairments. Next, using the derived expressions, exact and asymptotic combiners based on the minimum bit error-rate (MBER) criterion are formulated for MIMO VLC systems impaired by user-mobility, and channel-estimation error. The accuracy of the contributed expressions for BER, and the performance of the proposed MBER combiner (MBERC) are corroborated by simulations performed over realistic MIMO VLC channels. Additionally, it is found that the proposed MBERC delivers improved BER performance in presence of channel-estimation error and user-mobility, which makes the proposed methodology viable.