Optimizing SNR for indoor visible light communication via selecting communicating LEDs

In this paper, we investigate the layout of LED to optimize SNR by selecting communicating LEDs (C-LEDs) in indoor visible light communication (VLC) system. Due to the inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by the different arrival time of different optical rays, the SNR for any user is not optimal if a simple layout is adopted. It is interesting to investigate the LEDs layout for achieving optimal SNR in indoor VLC system. For a single user, LED signal is divided into the positive and negative components, they provide the power of desired signal and the power of ISI respectively. We introduce the concept of valid ratio (VR) which refers to the value of positive component over the negative component. Then we propose a VR threshold-based LED selection scheme which chooses C-LEDs by their VRs. For downlink broadcast VLC with multiple users, the SNRs of all users are different in a layout of C-LEDs. It is difficult to find a proper layout of C-LEDs to guarantee the BER of all users. To solve this problem, we propose an evolutionary algorithm (EA)-based scheme to optimize the SNR. The simulation results show that it is an effective method to improve SNR by selecting C-LEDs.