Channel gain and frame error rate for optical street lighting communication

Abstract

Visible light communications (VLC) could be used for public street lighting. The paper consists of two parts. A simulation model for direct current (DC) gain analysis with suitable improvements of channel gain and a first trial experiment are elaborated to find possible link configurations for dimming VLC in street lighting. The diffused channel gain is simulated to determine the non-directed optical power loss for a given photo diode. As a result neighbouring receivers detect -72.65 dBm optical power according to the DIN EN 13201 norm and using one BPW34 photo diode. The frame error rate (FER) is measured at different distances and received dimming levels for noncoherent dimming frequency shift On-Off keying (DFSOOK) and UART interface to evaluate the high loss. The FER has a minimum at 50% duty cycle. More effort in transceiver design is required, than in the current configuration, to guarantee a certain dimming range and low FER for street lighting.