Investigation into Using Compensation for the Nonlinear Effects of the Output of LEDs in Visible Light Communication Systems

This paper investigate the effects of the nonlinear output power to the input current transfer function of a light emitting diode (LED) used as the transmitter in visible light communication systems, and proposes a compensation technique to mitigate the non-linearity. Using an off the shelf red, amber, blue, green (RAGB) LED the nonlinear transfer function is measured and then compensated for. The results show that, for the green LED, which has the highest degree of nonlinearity, an improvement in the received error vector magnitude (EVM)of almost 7 dB can be achieved. We also show that, the improvement in EVM over the uncompensated scheme decreases with increased LED linearity.