1

Color-Independent OFDM-based Visible Light

Communication
Pankaz Das, Youngil Park, and Ki-Doo Kim*
implementation of a color independent VLC system using
OFDM.

AbstractIn this paper, we propose an OFDM-based VLC

system which can be color-independent by using the color
space-based modulation. Along with all promising advantages of
OFDM, the proposed system will be applicable for all colors in the
visible range.

III. SIMULATION RESULTS

Table I lists the simulation parameters. Three PDs followed
by three optical concentrators and optical bandpass filters
measured the intensity of each band. A silicon-based PIN
photodiode was assumed for visible light detection. In addition,
an LED driver circuit was used to compensate for the different
responsivities of different colors [6].

Index TermsColor space, Color-independent (compatible),

OFDM, Visible light communication, LED.

I. INTRODUCTION

TABLE I
THE SIMULATION PARAMETERS

As means of color space-based modulation, color-shift

keying (CSK) and generalized color modulation (GCM) have
been proposed thus far [1-3]. While CSK is currently applicable
for only white colored visible light, GCM is a color-independent
modulation scheme which can be used for communication under
varying target color conditions. Furthermore, GCM can provide
flicker-free operation, dimming control, and the ability to
function irrespective of the number of LEDs at the transmitter or
photo detectors (PDs) at the receiver [2-3].
Most of the previous research on OFDM-based VLC has
utilized only white light (LEDs) and did not consider the color
issue of visible light [4-5]. Therefore, no systematic way of
coping with color changing conditions of visible light has been
suggested thus far. However, color of visible light is a vital issue
for VLC system and VLC should be compatible with all colors
in the visible range. In this paper, we propose an OFDM based
VLC system which is color-independent. This means, our
proposed OFDM-based VLC system will be applicable for all
visible colors.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II, our proposed system model for OFDM-VLC is
introduced. Simulation results are presented and discussed in
Section III. Finally, Section IV concludes the paper.

Parameter
Number of LEDs and PDs
Number of constellation points (2 bit data
symbol is assumed)
Total intensity

3
4

Total number of data bits transmitted

213

Target color point coordinates in CIE1931

color space

(0.4,0.325)

3 LED positions (or points) at the transmitter

and the PDs at the receiver in CIE1931 color
space

R: (0.7347,0.2653)
G: (0.2738,0.7174)
B: (0.1666,0.0089)

Number of FFT points

256

Number of data sub carriers

256

3 A. U.

Figs. 2 and 3 show the BER performance of VLC system for

the GCM and OFDM, respectively, by varying the delay spread.
It is observed that BER performance of OFDM-VLC system
shows almost similar performances for various delay spread
values while BER performance of GCM-VLC system varies
considerably with delay spread variation.
IV. CONCLUSIONS

II. OFDM-BASED VLC SYSTEM MODEL

The proposed OFDM-VLC system model is shown in Fig.1
which contains two main blocks such as transmitter and receiver.
Basically, we combined the OFDM and GCM together in the
Manuscript received Feb 28, 2013.
The authors are with the School of Electrical Engineering, Kookmin University,
Seoul 136-702, Korea (*Corresponding author: Ki-Doo Kim, e-mail: kdk@
kookmin.ac.kr).

978-1-4673-5990-0/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

Value

672

We proposed an OFDM-based VLC system which can be

color-independent by using the color space-based modulation.
Through simulation, we showed that the proposed
OFDM-based VLC system is robust to ISI and is also color
independent.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Broadcasting-Communications
ICUFN 2013

2
R&D Program of KCC/KCA Korea (No. 11-911-01-111) as
well as by the Global Scholarship Program for Foreign
Graduate Students at Kookmin University in Korea.

[3]

[4]

REFERENCES
[1]
[2]

IEEE Standard for local and metropolitan area networks Part 15.7:
Short-range wireless optical communication using visible light, IEEE
Standard 802.15.7, June 2011.
P. Das, B.-Y. Kim, Y. Park, and K.-D. Kim, Color-independent VLC
based on a color space without sending target color information, Optics
Communications, vol. 286, pp. 69-73, Jan. 2013.

[5]
[6]

P. Das, B.-Y. Kim, Y. Park, and K.-D. Kim, A new color space based
constellation diagram and modulation scheme for color independent
VLC, Advances in Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol. 12, no. 4,
pp. 11-18, 2012, doi:10.4316/AECE.2012.04002.
M. Z. Afgani, H. Haas, H. Elgala, and D. Knipp, Visible light
communication using OFDM, 2nd International Conference on
Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks
and Communities, 2006.
H. Elgala, R. Mesleh, H. Haas, and B. Pricope, OFDM visible light
wireless communication based on white LEDs, IEEE 65th Vehicular
Technology Conference, pp. 2185 - 2189, 2007.
D. OBrien et al., Indoor visible light communications: challenges and
prospects, Proc. SPIE, vol. 7091, pp. 7091061-9, 2008.

Fig. 1. Complete system model for OFDM-VLC.

Fig. 2. BER vs. SNR of GCM-VLC for different delay spread.

Fig. 3. BER vs. SNR of OFDM-VLC for different delay spread.

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