Design and demonstration of an indoor visible light communication network with dynamic user access and resource allocation

We design and realize an indoor visible light communication (VLC) network based on the time division mechanism to mitigate inter-cell interference, which can support flexible access and resource allocation of multiple mobile users in the ultra-dense attocell layout. WiFi is adopted for the uplink feedback, including the user ID and channel state information. After receiving feedback, the central coordinator is capable of performing mobile user access, localization, handoff control and resource allocation. The data sent from the central coordinator is buffered at the distributed base stations within the attocells, and then transmitted to the scheduled user by downlink VLC. A real-time experimental platform including three attocells and two users is built up to evaluate the performance of the proposed VLC network. Furthermore, off-line measurements are conducted to find the optimal operating point of the system. Experimental results show that the bit error rate (BER) of the real-time transmission is below 6.3091 × 10−5, and the frame loss rates (FLRs) of static user and mobile user are about 0.1% and 8.2%, respectively.