Simulation of Visible Light Communication and Free Space Optic For IoT Using Optisystem

The implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) is developed and getting wider, such as for smart home, smart building, smart city, smart environment, smart agriculture as well as technology for e-health. These IoT-based systems need fast and real time communication, data collection and processing to provide the real time monitoring system. IoT currently utilize the wireless Radio Frequency (RF) based as a signal to transmit the data. However, in RF-based communication there are still some shortcomings in terms of capacity and latency, as well as in terms of the increasingly crowded frequency ranges, so interference problems are still a drawback of RF-based transmissions. In addition, in terms of health, the RF electromagnetic exposure may effect on the human health, especially when the RF transceiver is located close to the body and used for a long time. One alternative to complement the RF wireless is Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) technology that utilizes light as a signal to transmit the data. The advantages of optical-based transmissions are high capacity, low interference, and very low latency. This study investigates the OWC with the input bit rate is adjusted according to the bit rate of a certain Ethernet protocol. The simulation results from this study are FSO has the advantage of being able to deliver data further and maintain good performance in various weather conditions, and this makes FSO appropriate to be used in IoT outdoor applications while VLC is better to be used in IoT indoor applications. Because in VLC, various factors including Q-Factor, Eye Height and BER experienced a relatively small decrease for a shorter distance compared to FSO and it able to transmit data quickly and more stable at a short distance.