Investigation on overlapping interference on VLC networks consisting of multiple LEDs

Visible light communication (VLC) has become an alternative candidate in next-generation indoor wireless local area network. However, it is a great challenge for a receiver to obtain the signals from multiple LED sources that transmit different information. In this paper, we explore the BER degradation due to the overlapping of multiple LED sources in the visible light communication network. We experimentally demonstrate a Multiple Input Signal Output (MISO) VLC system utilizing space–time block coding (STBC) to overcome the signal interference due to multiple inputs. A throughput of 1.6 Gbit/s is successfully achieved, which reveals great improvement in the robustness and compatibility of LED based network system.