Noise Analysis and Modeling in Visible Light Communication Using Allan Variance

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a rising communication technology which uses Light-Emitting Diode (LED) luminaries for high-speed data transferring; however, the optical signal is usually degraded by the noise in the practical VLC system. In this paper, Allan Variance is introduced for noise analysis and modeling in VLC for the first time, which provides an efficient method to measure different kinds of noise in the VLC systems. By applying Allan variance to analyze the signals collected from the real-world environment, both white noise and random walk are observed in the VLC systems. The observed white noise and random walk are also modeled by using the Allan variance. The noise analysis and modeling based on Allan variance provide a method to improve the performance of VLC.