Joint Precoder and Equalizer Design for Multi-User Multi-Cell MIMO VLC Systems

In multi-user multi-cell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) visible light communication (VLC) systems, inter-cell interference (ICI) and inter-user interference (IUI) are the two key factors that could severely degrade the system performance. In this paper, for the first time, a novel joint precoder and equalizer design based on interference alignment is proposed to mitigate both IUI and ICI in multi-user multi-cell MIMO VLC systems under imperfect channel state information (CSI). The proposed approach aims to choose proper precoder and receiving equalizer to minimize the mean square error (MSE) under the unique optical power constraints in VLC. Furthermore, we consider optical channel estimation error in our formulated joint optimization problem when designing the joint precoder and receiving equalizer in multi-user multi-cell MIMO VLC systems. Numerical results show that the proposed design achieves a better performance under different users locations, channel estimation errors, and transmitter/receiver spacing, compared to the existing minimum mean square error (MMSE) and max-rate designs. Especially, when the transmit optical power is 12 W per light emitting diode (LED) lamp, our proposed design achieves a sum rate improvement of up to 18.2% and 28.7% as compared with the MMSE and max-rate designs, respectively. In addition, the proposed design can save about 1.4 and 4.3 W optical power per LED lamp as compared with the MMSE and max-rate designs, respectively, at a target bit error rate (BER) of 10$^{-3}$.