Investigation of LED Non-linearity on DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM in VLC Systems using Multichip RGB LEDs for Indoor Applications

Abstract The impact of the LED non-linearity on the Intensity Modulation Direct Detection (IM-DD) in the VLC using OFDM for white light generated using RGB LEDs for indoor applications is analyzed. This work extends the orders of harmonics for analysis and investigates the impact of this non-linearity issue on OFDM techniques. The wavelengths (Red, Green and Blue) are individually set at the LED and their induced photocurrent in a Si PD is calculated. The result shows that the wavelength corresponding to the 625nm induces 5dB and 3dB more power than 528nm and 458nm respectively. We choose 625nm as the OFDM signal carrier for transmission keeping the other two un-modulated. We compare the effects of the non-linearity of the LED on the two OFDM techniques- Asymmetrical clipped optical (ACO) and Direct current biased optical (DCO). Our simulation results show that the power of the 2 nd and 3 rd order intermodulation components for ACO-OFDM is 3dB lesser than DCO-OFDM. The required SNR for ACO-OFDM is found to be 3dB lesser as compared to DCO-OFDM. The clipping effect of the LED remains unchanged irrespective of the OFDM variation applied.