Introduction to Visible Light Communications

This chapter offers an overview of the history of visible light communication (VLC), its advantages, applications, related modulation and signal processing techniques, and standardization progresses. Higher rate VLC has attracted global research attentions, in particular, from European researchers at the beginning, by maximally exploring the light emitting diodes (LED) capabilities and increasing the spectral e?ciency. An optical diversity scheme was proposed, where the original data and its delayed versions were simultaneously transmitted over orthogonal frequencies. Data rate can be signi?cantly enhanced by employing di?erent degrees of freedom. VLC emerges as an alternative to alleviate radio spectrum crunch. Higher rate VLC has attracted global research attentions, in particular, from European researchers at the beginning, by maximally exploring the LED capabilities and increasing the spectral e?ciency. Visible light communication has many attractive advantages compared to its radio frequency (RF) counterpart, which include wide spectrum, easy implementation, and low cost.