A Seamless Broadband PLC-VLC Transmission: Performance Evaluation and Dimensioning

As the LED lamps are naturally connected to the powerline, the integration of powerline communication (PLC) and visible light communication (VLC) seems to be trivial. In fact, cascading VLC to PLC is not very simple especially because their channels are not designed for communication purposes. The PLC and VLC channels suffer from severe attenuation with increasing frequency. Thus, the cascading of these two channels will lead to a very limited bandwidth which can complicate the PLC-VLC integration. Few experimental studies are carried out to prove the feasibility of PLC-VLC integration, particularly those based on the amplify and forward (AF) relay. Therefore, PLC-VLC broadband transmission is demonstrated in this paper without making any changes to the transmitted PLC signal before traveling through the optical system. A theoretical study is also carried out to design LED luminaires capable of providing both lighting and communication. This study extrapolates the experimental results of the small-scale PLC-VLC testbed to design a PLC-VLC system for typical indoor applications.