Experimental demonstration of optical MIMO NOMA-VLC with single carrier transmission

•A MIMO-NOMA scheme is proposed for visible light communications.•A good balance between throughput and fairness, and a higher capacity are achieved.•The optimum power allocation ratio is 0.29 in the case of four users.

We experimentally demonstrate a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme for optical multiple inputs multiple outputs (MIMO) visible light communications (VLC) with single carrier transmission and frequency domain successive interference cancellation, which offers low peak to average power ratio, a good balance between throughput and fairness, and a higher system capacity for a larger number of users. The MIMO demultiplexing and the inter-user interference mitigation are realized with efficient channel equalization. The optimum power allocation ratio is about 0.29 in the case of four users.