JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO.

8, FEBRUARY 2020 1

Performance Analysis of Variable Pulse Position

Modulation for Joint Visible Light
Communication and Dimmable Illumination
Joshua Ofori Boateng, Jerry John Kponyo, Justice Owusu Agyemang, Williams Aaniana, Wilson Amoah

Abstract—In the last couple of years, there has been observable growth in research in visible light communications, and the idea of
providing both illumination and data communications using high-brightness LEDs. However, the long exposure to the constant
high-brightness of LED could have adverse effects on the users. In this paper, we present a modulation scheme that allows the LED
brightness to be regulated to suit user satisfaction without having substantial side effects on data communication. The system allows
dimmable illumination to meet standards set by the international Illumination Commission (CIE). We employ the variable pulse position
modulation, where brightness of LED is regulated based on the pulse width modulation and data transmission based on pulse position
modulation. The illuminance distributions for selected dimming ratios have been shown. The performance of the proposed modulation
scheme is analysed based on link availability, the probability of bit error, power requirement for optimum performance and maximum
data rate for Inter-Symbol Interference(ISI)- free communication.

Index Terms—VLC, LED, LoS, BER, RMS.

1 I NTRODUCTION

V ISIBLE light Communication technology is a technology

that involves using light emitting diodes(LEDs)
for communication besides the inbuilt illumination
capability [1], [2]. The dual functionality provided by
VLC (i.e., lighting and data communication from the
same high-brightness LEDs) has created a whole range
of interesting applications, including but not limited to
home networking, high-speed data communication via
lighting infrastructures in offices, car-to-car communication,
traffic lights management and communications to name
a few. [3]. White LEDs can be a threat to the health of
users since in VLC systems, the users are exposed to this
constant high- bright light from the LED as long as they
have access to communication. To ensure the safety and
well-being of a user, a VLC system that allows dimming
to meet illumination standards without compromising
communication performance is required.
This paper is organized as follows. In section II, related
works are discussed. In section III which is the methodology,
the LED brightness regulation based on the proposed
modulation scheme is explained, the appropriate channel
model is selected for the VLC system, the link availability,
BER performance and RMS delay spread are discussed
accordingly. In section IV the results of the simulation are
presented. Section V is conclusion.
proposed such as the inverted pulse position modulation(I-
PPM), subcarrier inverted pulse position modulation(SC-
I-PPM) [4], pulse width modulation (PWM), varying
modulation depth [5]. Recently, Rufo et al. reported a
combined system of Ethernet and VLC using DPPM
modulation method [7]. A multiple PPM(MPPM) to
support dimming while transmitting data stream has
been presented [6]. A joint LED dimming method with
high capacity VLC is proposed based on overlapping
PPM (OPPM) [11]. In these related works, the dimming
mechanism was not fully shown. Moreover, the link
availability to the user was not tackled either.
In this paper, we propose a VLC system based on
Variable Pulse Position Modulation. A practical room
according to specific parameters which include the
dimensions of the room, wall reflectance values is used.
Moreover, a log-normal shadowing path loss model is
employed and the availability of the link is observed. The
availability and the probability of outage of the link are
analysed for two transmitter-receiver separations. Next,
the probability of bit error in Additive White Gaussian
Noise(AWGN) is analysed and compared with two other
modulation schemes. The maximum data rate for ISI-free
communication is investigated and shown in a MATLAB
plot.

1.1 RELATED WORKS 1.2 METHODOLOGY

For joint visible light communication and dimmable
illumination, many modulation methods have been
• The authors are with the Department of Telecommunications Engineering,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.
E-mail: jjkponyo@ieee.org
Manuscript received January, 2020; revised January 5, 2020.
In this section, the approach to the LED brightness regula-
tion is demonstrated together with the simulation parame-
ters, VLC channel models are analysed and the appropriate
model is selected. Again, the link availability of the system
is investigated, the BER performance of the proposed mod-
ulation scheme over AWGN channel is presented as well as
the RMS delay spread.
JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 8, FEBRUARY 2020 2

1.2.1 LED BRIGHTNESS REGULATION 1.2.2 CHANNEL MODEL

A single LED is installed on the ceiling of a standard room For most indoor optical wireless applications, the IM/DD
with dimensions of 3m x 3m x 3m. A receiver height of 0.9m transmission technique is adopted. In VLC systems, it is
where it rests on the working plane is used. Table 1 shows imperative that the channel model is well understood. We
the simulation parameters used assumed a non-directed line of sight(LOS) channel since
it presents the characteristics of a practical channel. In a
baseband channel model for optical wireless communica-
TABLE 1: SIMULATION PARAMETERS tion system, the photo-current generated by the receiver
photodetector is provided as follows:
Semi-angle at half power 60[deg]
Number of LEDs 1
Wall reflectance value 0.4 y(t) = h(t) ∗ x(t) + n(t) (6)
Gain of optical filter 1.0
Detector physical area of a PD 0.9 [cm2 ] Where the PD sensitivity is unity, x(t) is the transmitter
Receiver sensitivity 0.53x10−5 optical, h(t) is the channel impulse response and n(t) is
Gain of optical Concentrator 1.0 the receiver noise. Noise is modelled as an Additive White
Absolute temperature 290[K]
Standard deviation 1.0 Gaussian noise with a double sided power spectral density
FET trans-conductance 30x10−3 of N0 .
Background current 5.1 [mA]

This paper assumes the emission from the source (LED) and
the reflected points on the wall follows a Lambertian radi-
ation pattern [8], [9]. The Lambertian emission implies that,
the light intensity from the source has a cosine dependence
on the angle of emission with respect to the surface normal.
The various expressions and functions for VLC link, [10],
[11], the luminous intensity in angle φ is given by: Fig. 1: Non-directed LOS channel

I(φ) = I(0)cosm (φ) (1) To analyse the performance of the proposed system, the
received optical power is calculated based on the channel
Where I(φ) signifies the center illuminous intensity of the DC gains on both the directed, hlos (0) and the reflected
LED, φ is the angle of irradiance, m is the order of Lam- href (0) paths. Since the contribution of href (0) on the
bertian emission. The order of Lambertian emission is given overall channel response decreases with the number of
as: reflections, only the first reflection is used in computations
[12]. The channel DC gains on the line of sight path and the
ln2 reflected path are given as follows [DC gains on the line of
m=− (2) sight path and the reflected path are given as follows [13];
ln(cosφ0.5 )
 A(m+1)
m+1
The transmitted power at each duty cycle of the PWM signal hlos (0) = 2πd2 cos (φ)T s ∗ g, (7)
shows the total energy emitted from the LED. The luminous
intensity is given as; (
A(m+1) m+1
2π(d1 d2 )2 cos (φ)cosαcosβ ∗ T s ∗ g,
dφ href (0) =
I= (3)
dΩ (8)
Where Ω is the spatial angle, and φ is the luminous flux, Where A is the physical area of a detector in a photodetector,
which can be given from the energy flux φe as; T s is the gain of the optical filter, g is the gain of the optical
concentrator, m is the Lambertian order of emission, d is
Z 780 the distance between the transmitter and receiver for the
φ = Km V (λ)φe (λ)dλ (4) LOS, d1 and d2 represents the distance from the transmitter
380 and the point of reflection and the distance from the point
where V (λ) is the standard luminosity curve, Km is the of reflection to the receiver respectively. Also, α and β
maximum visibility, and the maximum visibility is about represents the angle of incidence and angle of reflection
683lm/W at λ = 555nm. Finding the integral of the energy respectively.
flux φe in all directions gives the transmitted optical power.
1.2.3 LINK AVAILABILITY
Z λmax Z 2π
In this paper, we selected the log-normal shadowing model
Pt = φe dθdλ (5) as a path loss estimation model to predict the received signal
λmin 0
strength and the probability of outage of the link. Like radio
Where λmin and λmax are determined by the sensitivity wireless system, the probability that the received optical
curve of the photo diode. power is greater than the photodetector sensitivity is key.
JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 8, FEBRUARY 2020 3

The received optical power in watt for the proposed system PR is the total received optical power from both the LOS
is given by; and reflected paths. Pd is the received optical power from
the LOS path, Pr is the received power from the first
reflected path. td and tr represents the propagation delay
X
Pr−nlos = Pt (hlos (0) + hrsf (0)) (9)
ref
of the signal on the directed LOS path and reflected path
respectively.
The probability of outage is given by;
P¯r(dBm) − Rs(dBm) As a rule of thumb, to avoid ISI, the inequality below
P rob(P r ≤ Rs ) = Q( ) (10) must be satisfied.
σ(dB)
Rb ≤ 10σt (17)
Where, P¯r(dbm) is the mean received optical power in
dBm, Rs(dBm) represents the receiver sensitivity in dBm
and σ(dB) is the standard deviation of the received optical Where Rb is the data rate.
power at different locations in the room from the mean
received optical power. From equation (10), the availability
can be deduced as follows;
2 RESULTS
P rob(available) = 1 − P rob(P r ≤ Rs) (11)

1.2.4 BIT ERROR PERFORMANCE

One performance metric required for the performance anal-
ysis of a modulation scheme is the bit error rate. In most
visible light communication systems, the optimum error
performance is pegged at 10(−3) . In this paper, we use
MATLAB to compare the bit error performance of the vari-
able pulse position modulation with NRZ-OOK and RZ-
OOK. The BER expression for the modulation scheme under
consideration is as follows;
q
1 SN R( 12 log2 L)
BERvppm = erf c[ √ ] (12)
2 2
Where L represents the number of signal elements and
signal-to-noise ratio, SNR is given as; Fig. 2: Illuminance distribution at 50% duty cycle
R2 P r 2 Fig.2 above shows a MATLAB plot of the illuminance
SN R = (13)
σshot + σth distribution at 50% PWM duty cycle. The maximum
Where R is the responsivity of the photodetector, P r is the illuminance was observed to be approximately 510 lux and
received optical power, σshot and σth are the shot noise and increases when the PWM duty cycle is increased and vice
the thermal noise respectively. versa.

1.2.5 ROOT MEAN SQUARE DELAY SPREAD

In a channel, where there is multipath propagation, it is
imperative that we investigate the dispersive nature of the
channel in the time domain. With RMS delay spread, this
paper investigates and shows the maximum data rate of the
VLC system based on variable pulse position modulation
without ISI. The RMS delay spread is given as follows [14];
p
σt = τ̄ 2 − (τ̄ )2 (14)

Where τ̄ represents the mean excess delay given by;

PN
(Pd td + 1 )Pr tr
τ̄ = (15)
PR
And τ̄ 2 represents the mean square excess delay also ex-
pressed as follows; Fig. 3: A graph of LED brightness against dimming ratio
PN
(Pd t2d + 1 )Pr t2r Fig.3 shows the change in LED brightness as the duty cycle
τ̄ 2 = (16) of the PWM signal is varied over the entire dimming range.
PR
JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 8, FEBRUARY 2020
Fig. 4: Availability of VLC system against transmitted power
in dBm
Figure 4 shows that the link is 99.999% available from
5% to 100% dimming considering 3 metres Tx-Rx separa-
tion. The dimming range decreases with increasing Tx-Rx
separation.
Fig. 5: Comparison of BER of VPPM with NRZ-OOK and
RZ-OOK
In Fig.5 and for a given Eb/N o, VPPM outperforms the
other two schemes. Moreover, VPPM requires less trans-
mitted power to reach optimum bit error rate of 10−3 as
compared to NRZ and RZ-OOK, thereby making VPPM
more power efficient.
4
Fig. 6: Maximum ISI-free data rate over allowable dimming
range
In Fig.6 above, it is shown that the maximum data rate for
ISI-free communication is fairly constant and is approxi-
mately 116.6Mbps.
3 C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a joint visible light communication and
dimmable illumination system based on variable pulse po-
sition modulation has been presented. The dimming mech-
anism has also been illustrated using MATLAB plots. The
non- directed LOS channel was selected and only the first
order reflections were considered. The availability of the
system was investigated and was found to be 99.999%
available between 5% and 100% dimming range. The bit
error performance of VPPM was investigated and proved to
outperform NRZ-OOK and RZ-OOK. The maximum data
rate for ISI-free communication was shown to be fairly
constant over the acceptable dimming range.
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