The Spatial Dimming Scheme for the MU-MIMO-OFDM VLC System

Multiuser visible light communication (MU-VLC) systems utilizing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) are gaining increased attentions recently. Visible light communication (VLC) links are expected to work under different illumination conditions and, thus, the need for dimming control mechanisms. However, the traditional analog- and digital-based dimming schemes have adverse effects on the data communications performance, such as clipping distortion and the variation of the duty cycle. In this paper, spatial dimming schemes based on the zero-forcing and the minimum mean-squared error precoding schemes are proposed for direct-current biased optical OFDM based indoor MU-MIMO VLC system, and the bipolar optical OFDM signal is biased by a fixed dc level. Transmit antenna selection algorithms are designed for the optimum working light emitting diodes (LEDs) subset at each dimming level. Owing to the simultaneously exploration of the selection diversity of LEDs-based lights and the channel state information, the proposed spatial dimming schemes outperform the traditional dimming schemes, which is also verified by simulation results. Thus, the proposed schemes are shown to have a great potential to be applied in practical MU-MIMO-OFDM VLC systems.