Uncoordinated multiple access scheme for VLC systems with positioning capability

Visible light communication (VLC) has attracted a lot of attention in past several years. VLC systems can be used for both communications and indoor positioning. Several designs of VLC systems have been proposed and most of them require central units to control the light emitting diodes (LEDs) in the transmitters to avoid interference at the receiver side. In this paper, we propose a novel multiple access scheme for VLC systems that does not require central unit. The transmitters simultaneously broadcast different information. The receiver can extract the information from the superposition of the received signals from the transmitters. The received power from individual transmitters can also be determined at the receiver so that positioning algorithms can be applied. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme outperforms existing multiple access schemes for VLC systems without central unit.