Performance Analysis of Integrated Power-Line/Visible-Light Communication Systems with AF Relaying

Reliable data transmissions and offering better mobility to the end user can be achieved by integrating different communication systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of a cascaded indoor power line communication (PLC)/visible light communication (VLC) system with the presence of an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. Using the pre-installed infrastructure of electricity wiring networks gives the advantage to use PLC as a backbone for VLCs. The performance of the proposed hybrid system is discussed in terms of the average capacity. A mathematical method is developed for this network to formulate the capacity by exploiting the statistical properties of both the PLC and VLC channels. The derived analytical expressions are validated by Monte Carlo simulations. The results showed that there is a considerable improvement in the performance of the hybrid system as the relay gain increases whereas it deteriorates with increasing the end-to-end distance. A comparison between the performance of a parallel hybrid/PLC and hybrid systems is also provided. It is found that the hybrid/PLC system outperforms the hybrid one. However, the user mobility offered by the latter system remains the main advantage over the former approach.