Bit Error Rate Analysis for OFDM Schemes Applied to Underground Mining VLC Systems

Abstract

In this paper, three orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) schemes are simulated and applied in the underground mining visible light communication (UM-VLC) system. The schemes are asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM), direct current (DC) biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM), and asymmetrically clipped DC biased optical OFDM (ADO-OFDM). These techniques are evaluated and compared at different m-ary amplitude modulations (M-QAM) in the underground mining scenario based on the bit error rate (BER) metric. It is shown that, in terms of BER, the ACO-OFDM technique has a better performance compared to the other schemes presented, due to its simplicity and efficiency of the use of optical power.