Demonstrating practical indoor LTE-over-optical wireless

Abstract

We show practical feasibility of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) based indoor coverage using optical wireless communication, exploiting commercially available Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). A common LTE-Advanced signal is distributed in downlink by a visible LED, and in uplink by infrared LED (IR-LED). We demonstrate the bidirectional transmission operating in non-directed line-of-sight configuration. Assuming a distance of 2 m (ceiling to desk), the effective coverage is around 12 m2, with no need of complex line-of-sight tracking systems. These results indicate that this scheme has great potential for practical Visible Light Communication (VLC) system implementations in small-cell indoor environments and could be helpful for overcoming the capacity needs of the future indoor cellular networks.