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Energy Efficient Modulation Techniques for Li-Fi

Prerna Budhraja, Sanchita Agnihotri
Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore.

 
Abstract- Various modulation techniques used for Li-fi.
​Li-Fi could be the fully networked solution for multiple I​NTRODUCTION1
users that combines communication and illumination Due to the increasing demand for wireless electronic
simultaneously. Light emitting diodes(LEDs) are used in communication, the on the market spectrum below ten
Li-Fi as visible light transmitters, therefore only
gigahertz (cm wave communication) has become
intensity modulated direct detected modulation
inadequate. To address this problem, the communication
techniques can be achieved. Even though the Li-fi
industry would need to above that spectrum.
technology can give a boost in performance but due to
the limited modulation bandwidth of the devices
employed in the transformation, employment of very
efficient modulation techniques are necessary. Single
carrier modulation techniques are straightforward to be
used in Li-Fi,however,computationally complex
equalization processes are required in frequency
selective Li-Fi channels.On the other hand,multicarrier Fig1. shows the spectrum with the visible light spectrum
modulation techniques offer a viable solution for Li-Fi enlarged.
in terms of power,spectral and computational efficiency.
In particular, orthogonal frequency division Technical advancements and analyses have shown that
multiplexing(OFDM) based modulation techniques offer optical wireless communication (OWC) systems can offer
a practical solution for Li-Fi, especially when direct some significant advantages like low power requirements,
current(DC) wander, and adaptive bit and power much larger bandwidth capacity and requirements, high
loading techniques are considered. security. It also has characteristics which can be used over
The wireless information sharing through Li fi is done large domains in communication systems.
by transmission of fast pulses of light. Communications
can occur either in parallel or serial way. Parallel
LiFi consists of a complete wireless network system which
communications are employed for high transmission
includes bi-directional multiuser communication.This paper
rates but short distances whereas serial transmission is
takes a broader view on the modulation techniques that
preferred for long distances. Our research paper will try
to shed light on new approaches which can be employed could be used for Li-Fi. Many techniques are proposed for
in serial and parallel communications. Li-Fi modulation the modulation purposes.Proposed models include EH-HL
techniques need to also satisfy illumination model for future smart homes and industries based on the
requirements. Flickering avoidance and dimming integration of Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Network
control will also be considered in the variant modulation (EH-WSNs) and hybrid LiFi/WiFi communication
techniques that will be presented. techniques.

​
Index Terms— Energy efficient, Li-fi, modulation, wireless
communication GREEN COMMUNICATION
Green communication techniques mainly focus on energy
harvesting techniques that produce energy from renewable
resources and utilize stored energy whenever required.
Nature provides us with a variety of forms of energy
resources that can be harvested and used for WSN . Some
of the resources such as wind, thermal, solar, and radio

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frequency, Some of the resources such as wind, thermal,
solar, and radio frequency, could provide the required
amount of power. Energy harvesting is an assuring solution
to encounter the energy efficiency problem. These solutions
should not result in the generation of CO2 emissions.The
large interconnected sensor nodes form as Adhoc network
which is densely deployed. The sensor nodes in a sensor
network several orders of magnitude. They are densely
deployed, their topology changes frequently, and the
mobility of the sensor nodes causes more overhead on
sensor nodes. One of the main characteristics of sensor
nodes with low power consumption is that they have limited
power. How to control the power and extend the life of the
sensor node is become an important issue. We also envisage
that WSNs will be an integral part of our lives in areas such
as smart homes and industries. As such, the motivation
comes from the question of why we need power
management in WSNs and how to achieve it. When the
sensor nodes are losing their energy in communications,
they cannot accomplish their role unless some harvesting
mechanism is applied to fill the energy gap.
III. LI-FI MODULATION TECHNIQUES
CHALLENGES
Li ⁃ Fi is an emerging high ⁃ speed, low ⁃ cost solution
to the scarcity of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum,
therefore it is expected to be realized using the widely
deployed off⁃the shelf optoelectronic LEDs. Due to the
mass production of these inexpensive devices, they lack
accurate characterizations. In Li⁃Fi, light is modulated on
the subtle changes of the light intensity, therefore, the
communication link would be affected by the non⁃linearity
of the voltage⁃luminance characteristic. As a solution
pre⁃distortion techniques were proposed to mitigate
non⁃linear distortion. However, as the LED temperature
increases the voltage⁃luminance (V⁃L) characteristic
experiences memory⁃effects. Therefore, the LED non ⁃
linearity mitigation is still an open research problem. The
limited bandwidth of Li⁃Fi communication channel leads to
inter ⁃ symbol interference (ISI) at high data rates. The
LED frequency response is modeled as a low⁃pass filter,
and it is a major contributor to the frequency selectivity of
Li⁃ Fi channels. The modulation bandwidth over which the
frequency response of most commercially available LEDs
can be considered flat is around 2-20 MHz. However, the
usable bandwidth in Li⁃Fi could be extended beyond the 3
dB cut⁃off frequency.
Therefore, modulation techniques with higher spectral
efficiencies are key elements in a Li⁃Fi system design.
Satisfying the illumination requirements is a key element in
Li⁃Fi. Most of the research on modulation techniques has
been on the communication system performance of Li⁃Fi
system. Factors such as dimming, illumination level control
and flickering have been analyzed as secondary parameters
of a Li⁃Fi system. The Li⁃Fi systems should be also
considered as an illumination system with communications
capability, not the reverse
IV. MODULATION TECHNIQUES FOR LI-FI
In this section, digital modulation techniques generally
used for LiFi are summarised, and some special issues and
requirements are discussed. In principle, LiFi also relies on
electromagnetic radiation for information transmission.
Therefore, typically used modulation techniques in RF
communication can also be applied to LiFi with necessary
modifications.
Fig.2 The principal building blocks of LiFi and its
application areas.
Moreover, due to the use of visible light for wireless
communication, LiFi also provides a number of unique and
specific modulation formats.
A. SINGLE-CARRIER MODULATION
​ idely used single-carrier modulation (SCM) schemes
W
for LiFi include on-off keying (OOK), pulse position
modulation (PPM) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM),
which have been studied in wireless infrared (IR)
communication systems.
OOK: OOK is one of the well known and simple
modulation schemes, and it provides a good trade-off
between system performance and implementation
complexity. The 802.15.7 standard uses Manchester Coding
to ensure the period of positive pulses is the same as the
negative ones but this also doubles the bandwidth required
for OOK transmission. Alternatively, for higher bit rates
run length limited (RLL) coding is used which is more
spectrally efficient. OOK dimming can be achieved by:

i) Refining the ON/OFF levels: Dimming through
refining the ON/OFF levels of the LED can maintain the
same data rate, however, the reliable communication range
would decrease at low dimming levels.
ii) Applying symbol compensation: dimming by symbol
compensation can be achieved by inserting additional
ON/OFF pulses, whose duration is determined by the
desired dimming level.
Fig.3 OOK modulation scheme using Manchester Coding
On-off keying (OOK) means the simplest form of
amplitude-shift keying (ASK) modulation that represents
digital data as the presence or absence of a carrier wave.
The data is conveyed by turning the LED off and on. In its
simplest form a digital „1‟ is represented by the light „on‟
state and a digital „0‟ is represented by the light „off‟ state.
The beauty of this method is that it is really simple to
generate and decode. As the maximum data rate is achieved
with a 50% dimming level assuming equal number of 1s
and 0s, increasing or decreasing the brightness of the LED
would cause the data rate to decrease.
PPM & VPPM: pulse-position modulation(PPM) is a
form of signal modulation in which M message bits are
encoded by transmitting a signal pulse in one of possible
required time-shifts. VPPM is similar to PPM but it allows
the pulse width to be controlled to support light dimming,
according to a specified brightness level. Therefore, VPPM
can be viewed as a combination of PPM and pulse width
modulation (PWM).
Fig.4 Variable Pulse Position Modulation to support
dimming
The duration of the period containing the pulse must be
long enough to allow different positions to be identified,
e.g. a „0‟ is represented by a positive pulse at the beginning
of the period followed by a negative pulse, and a „1‟ is
represented by a negative pulse at the beginning of the
period followed by a positive pulse. When there is no
requirement for lighting or indicating, SCPPM (SubCarrier
PPM) is used in order to save energy.
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Compared with OOK, PPM is more power-efficient but
has a lower spectral efficiency. A novel SCM scheme,
termed optical spatial modulation (OSM), which relies on
the principle of spatial modulation, proves to be both
power- and bandwidth-efficient for indoor optical wireless
communication. As a vibration scheme of quadrature
amplitude modulation (QAM) for single carrier systems,
carrierless amplitude and phase modulation (CAP) uses
two orthogonal signals, in place of the real and imaginary
parts of the QAM signalling format, for spectrum-efficient
signal transmission in LiFi networks.
B. MULTI-CARRIER MODULATION
For high-speed optical wireless communication, efforts
are drawn to multi-carrier modulation (MCM). Compared
with SCM, MCM is more bandwidth-efficient but less
energy-efficient. One and perhaps the most common
realisation of MCM in LiFi networks is orthogonal
frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), where parallel
data streams are transmitted simultaneously through a
collection of orthogonal subcarriers and complex equaliser
circuits can be omitted. Each sub-channel can be considered
as a flat fading channel.
OFDM: Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM) is a method of encoding digital data on multiple
carrier frequencies. This is a new approach to transmission
in which an additional dimension is added to conventional
2D amplitude/phase modulation (APM) techniques such as
quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and amplitude
shift keying (ASK). Unlike the traditional OFDM
technique, the Subcarrier Index Modulation Orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing technique splits the serial
bit stream into two bit sub-streams of the same length. The
key idea is to use the subcarrier index to convey
information to the receiver.
As a result, the OFDM-generated signal is complex and
bipolar by nature. In order to fit the IM/DD requirement
imposed by commercially available LEDs, necessary
modifications to the conventional OFDM techniques are
required for LiFi. Asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM
(ACO-OFDM) is another type of optical OFDM scheme
where, as well as imposing Hermitian symmetry, only the
odd subcarriers are used for data transmission and the even
subcarriers are set to zero. Therefore, the spectral efficiency
of ACO-OFDM is further halved. Since only a small DC
bias is required in ACO-OFDM, it is more energy-efficient
than DCO-OFDM. To incorporate dimming support into
optical OFDM, reverse polarity optical OFDM
(RPO-OFDM) was proposed to combine the high rate
OFDM signal with the slow rate PWM signal, both of
which contribute to the overall illumination of the LED.
As an alternative to ACO-OFDM, flip-OFDM and
unipolar OFDM (U-OFDM) can achieve comparable bit
error ratio (BER) performance and spectral efficiency. A
novel modulation scheme, named enhanced unipolar
OFDM (eU-OFDM), allows a unipolar signal generation
with-out additional spectral efficiency loss as in
ACO-OFDM, PAM-DMT, flip-OFDM and U-OFDM.
Recently, an alter-native to OFDM has been proposed,
which uses the Hadamard matrix instead of the Fourier
matrix as an orthog-onal matrix to multiplex multiple data
streams.
C. LIFI SPECIFIC MODULATION
LiFi transmitters are generally designed not only for
wireless communication but also for illumination, which
can be realised either by using blue LEDs with yellow
phosphorus or by colour mixing through coloured LEDs.
Luminaries equipped with multicoloured LEDs can provide
further possibilities for signal modulation and detection in
LiFi systems.
CSK: Color shift keying (CSK) is an IM scheme outlined
in IEEE 802:15:7 [3], where signals are encoded into colour
intensities emitted by red, green and blue (RGB) LEDs. In
CSK, incoming bits are mapped on to the instantaneous
chromaticities of the coloured LEDs while maintaining a
constant average perceived colour.
By combining different colours of light, the output data
can be carried by the colour itself and hence the intensity of
the output can be near constant. Mixing of RGB primary
sources produces different colours which are coded as
information bits. The x-y chromaticity diagram shows the
colour space and associated wavelengths in blue text (units
are nm).
Fig.5 RGB LEDs that combines different wavelengths
for CSK
The advantages of CSK over conventional IM schemes
are twofold. Firstly, since a constant luminous flux is
guaranteed, there would be no flicker effect over all
frequencies. Secondly, the constant luminous flux implies a
nearly constant LED driving current, which reduces the
possible inrush current at signal modulation, and thus
improves LED reliability. Based on CSK, metameric
modulation (MM) was developed and it can achieve higher
energy efficiency and provide further control of the colour
quality, however, with the disadvantage of this system is the
complexity of both the transmitter and the receiver. It
requires an additional and independently controlled green
LED.
V. ENERGY EFFICIENT TECHNIQUES
For making Li-fi techniques Energy efficient, MIMO
techniques can be employed. There are three types of
MIMO, they are RC, SMP and SM. Light can be
transmitted simultaneously using RC method. Due to this it
could result into lower BER.In SMP, an independent stream
of modulated symbols is transmitted by each light source.
In SM method, the modulation is referred to as SSK. Each
transmitter is assigned a bit size of log​2​(N​t​). Depending
upon channel conditions and the required spectral
efficiency, every one of the MIMO systems requires a
specific optical power at the transmitter so as to get an
acceptable error rate. The error rates for different MIMO
techniques are estimated using equations given below,
RC usually performs better than SM and SMP but it can
lead to low BER due to the transmit diversity, Therefore we
need an adaptive technique which would require lower
input energy at the receiver position. The required SNR for
the adaptive method is found to be minimum compared to
other techniques.
CONCLUSION
Any MIMO technique employed results into different BERs
and performances. Our research paper concludes that
adaptive methods utilises the minimum energy for the
modulation purposes in Li-Fi. It can also see its technical
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advancements in IoT applications. Thus, the fast
transmission through Li-fi could be made achievable by the
employment of CSK and energy efficient modulation
techniques.
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