Deployment Issues and Performance Study in a Relay-Assisted Indoor Visible Light Communication System

This paper investigates the deployment issues and analyzes the performance of a relay-assisted indoor visible light communications (VLC) system with dc-biased optical orthogonal frequency division modulation (DCO-OFDM). The study considers two light sources in an office environment. One light source works as the information source and is located at the ceiling while the other one works as the relay terminal, which usually is a desk light or a floor light. We analyze the general blockage in a room, discuss the path loss of the VLC channel, and compare received signal power from a line of sight (LOS) link and a non-LOS link. The constraints on the relay height in order to achieve LOS connection are investigated. Simplified optimal power allocation under illumination and blockage constraints is proposed. Bit error rate performance is analyzed and the required signal power is derived for the relay-assisted DCO-OFDM VLC system. The study shows that in a relay-assisted VLC system, the blockage of source to destination link has trivial influence on the overall system performance if relays are properly deployed.