Performance Analysis of Defused VLC Channel for Mobile Environment

Visible light communication (VLC) is proposed to complement the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. In the VLC systems, the existing LED lighting infrastructure is utilized for data communication. The visible light cannot penetrate walls and other objects, and thus mainly relies on the line-of-sight (LOS) communication. The critics have reservations on the application of VLC in mobile scenarios, either due to device orientation or user movement. In practical scenarios, it is observed that visible light experiences reflections from diffused surfaces such as walls, ceilings, and floor, and thus creates defused/non-line of sight (NLOS) channels. For VLC systems, in many recent studies, it is considered that first-order reflections arrive simultaneously without any propagation delay with LOS signal and can thus contribute to the optical gain, which can be helpful to provide data communication to highly mobile users. This research work, therefore, evaluates the NLOS channels and study their effect on mobile users. In this paper, the analytical model is evaluated for two simulation scenarios: a) LOS only, b) LOS and NLOS. Results show that NLOS contributes to optical gain and maintains communication in mobility scenarios.