A NOMA Scheme for Visible Light Communications

using a Single Carrier Transmission

1
Bangjiang Lin, 1Xuan Tang, 2Zabih Ghassemlooy, 1Chun Lin, 1Min Zhang, 1Zhenlei Zhou 3Yi Wu and 3Hui Li
1
Quanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing, Haixi Institutes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fujian, China; 2Optical
Communications Research Group, NCRLab, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, NE1 8ST,
Newcastle, U.K.; 3Key Laboratory of OptoElectronic Science and Technology for Medicine of Ministry of Education, Fujian
Normal University, China.
[email protected]

Abstract—We propose a non-orthogonal multiple access including a filter bank multicarrier could be used. However,
(NOMA) scheme for visible light communications (VLC) based unlike the conventional multiple access technologies, NOMA
on single carrier (SC) transmission and frequency-domain superposes user data in the power domain and uses successive
successive interference cancellation. The scheme can achieve a interference cancellation (SIC) as well as capacity-achieving
low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), a good balance channel codes such as the Turbo and low-density parity check
between the throughput and fairness, and a higher system (LDPC) codes at the receiver (Rx) to separate the user data, so
capacity for a larger number of users. We show that the proosed that all of the users can use the whole time-frequency resources.
scheme offers improved bit error rate performance compared to
As a result, NOMA can balance the throughput and fairness. It
the orthogonal frequency domain multiplexing based VLC
has been regarded as a promising solution to enhance the
system.
spectral efficiency for the 5th generation (5G) wireless
Keywords—non-orthogonal multiple access; single carrier; networks [9-12].With good feasibility and performance, it has
visible light communications also been adopted in VLC systems [13-15]. In [16], a phase
pre-distortion method was proposed to improve the symbol
error rate performance of the NOMA uplink with SIC decoding
I. INTRODUCTION in VLC. In [17], we propose a NOMA scheme combined with
The visible light communication (VLC) system is gaining a OFDMA for VLC, which offered flexible bandwidth allocation
growing interest in both wireless and optical communities. This and a higher system capacity.
is due to a number of advantages including license-free
spectrum, inherent security (since light stays within a confined In this paper, we propose a NOMA scheme for the VLC
space), higher transmission speed compared to the radio system, which uses a single carrier (SC) format and a novel
frequency (RF) based wireless technologies, lower energy frequency domain SIC (FD-SIC). SC transmission can
consumption (i.e., a green technology based on the energy outperform OFDM in terms of the peak to average power ratio
efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs) lighting fixtures), and (PAPR), which is critical in VLC system due to the high
relatively low cost [1-4]. The key features of the LED lighting nonlinearity characteristics (i.e., power vs current) of LEDs
sources are that they can be used for illumination, data [18]. In this work, we experimentally verify the feasibility of
communications, indoor localization and sensing. the proposed NOMA-VLC with SC transmission. The effect of
power allocation ratio (PAR) on the bit error rate (BER)
The radio access technologies for RF based mobile
performance is also investigated. The experiment results show
communications are typically characterized by multiple access
schemes such as frequency division multiple access (FDMA), that, compared with OFDM, the SC transmission for NOMA-
time division multiple access (TDMA), and code division VLC offers improved BER performance.
multiple access (CDMA) in order to increase the transmission
throughput. These multiple access technologies are also The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section 2,
adopted in VLC systems to support multiple services to we introduce the SC and FD-SIC based NOMA scheme for
multiple users concurrently as well as increase the transmission VLC systems. Section 3 presents the experiment setup and
data rate. Orthogonal multiple access (OMA) techniques such results for the NOMA-VLC followed by the concluding
as the time domain multiple access (TDMA), orthogonal remarks in Section 4.
frequency domain multiple access (OFDMA) and interleaved
frequency division multiple access (IFDMA) have been II. TECHNIQUE PRINCIPLE
introduced in VLC systems [5-9]. However, these schemes Figure 1 shows the schematic system diagram of the
suffer from the tradeoff between the throughput and fairness. proposed NOMA-VLC with N-user and FD-SIC. At the
transmitter (Tx), the source data ds(t) for each user is mapped
Recently, the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to the amplitude quadrature modulation (QAM) format and
scheme, which is a novel multiple access strategy, has drawn grouped into blocks prior to power allocation, respectively.
great attention [9-12]. The basic signal waveform for NOMA The cyclic prefix (CP) is added at the start of each block to
could be based on OFDM or Fourier transform spread OFDM
combat the multi-path induced inter-symbol interference (ISI)
as well as LTE radio access, although alternative waveforms

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in non-line of sight VLC systems. A preamble is added at the W
front of each frame for the purpose of frame synchronization YN . XN  (6)
HN
and channel estimation. Following power allocations, all the
transmitted signals xi are combined together with a total Following IDFT operation and QAM demodulation, the time
transmitted power Pt, which can be given by: domain representation of YN, the transmitted signal for the user
N N is obtained with no user interference.
x ¦ pi xi , (1)
i 1 user 1 QAM Preamble Power x1
Add CP
where pi and xi are the allocated power and the transmitted Modulation Insertion Allocation
x
time-domain signal for the user i, respectively. Note that, the Ė Ė +
user N
power allocation is realized in the digital domain and the QAM
Add CP
Preamble Power
Modulation Insertion Allocation xN
optical domain for downlink and uplink, respectively.
(a)
At the Rx, the received signal can be written as:
N Y1
y ¦ h … x  w,
i 1
i i (2) S '1
QAM Demod. IDFT CE
Y
DFT
The frequency-domain representation of y can be written as: QAM
H1 X 1
DFT -
N Modulation
Y ¦H
i 1
i u Xi W , (3) S '2
QAM Demod. IDFT
Y2
CE
CP
Remove
Frame
Syn.
where hi and Hi are time-domain and frequency-domain Ė Ė
channel coefficients for the user i respectively, which can be S 'N YN
QAM Demod. IDFT CE - H N 1 X N 1
determined from the inserted time-multiplexed training
sequences in the preambles respectively. Here we assume that, (b)
more power is allocated to the users with lower index, so that
H1 > H2 … > HN. The received signal is then passed through a Fig. 1 Block diagrams for: (a) NOMA coder, and (b) NOMA decoder (CP:
cyclic prefix, CE: channel equalization, DFT: discrete Fourier transform, IDFT:
frame synchronization module prior to CP removal. In the inverse discrete Fourier transform).
proposed FD-SIC scheme, following discrete Fourier
transform (DFT) operation, the received signal for the user 1
can be obtained by dividing Y by H1, which can be written as: III. EXPERIMENT SETUP AND RESULTS
N
H W
Y1 X 1  ¦ i X i  . (4) Figure 2 shows the experimental setup for the NOMA-
i 2 H 1 H 1 VLC system with two users. For the downlink, two 1.7-M
The transmitted signal of the user 1 (i.e., s1) is recovered after baud baseband 4-QAM signals are three times up-sampled and
demapping the time domain representation of Y1. After then up-converted to 1.25 MHz by means of digital real and
removing the term of H1 X 1 in (3), the received signal is imaginary modulation. This ensures that, the generated SC
signals are real-valued, and positive that can be used for
divided by H2, which can be given by:
intensity modulation (IM) of the LEDs. The two generated
N
H W
Y2 X 2  ¦ i X i  . (5) signals are combined following power allocation in the digital
i 3 H 2 H 2 domain and then are uploaded to an arbitrary waveform
The transmitted signal of the user 2 (i.e., s2) can be recovered generator (AWG) operating at 5 MS/s. The block size and the
after demapping the time domain representation of Y2. The CP length are 256 and 8, respectively. The generated
decoding order of FD-SIC is in the order of increasing the waveform is converted into an analog stream and then
channel gain (i.e., Hi). Finally, the received signal for the user superimposed onto a direct current (DC) via a bias Tee to
N can be written as: drive the commercially available phosphorescent white LED.

Matlab Matlab

NOMA Arbitrary NOMA

Scope
Coder Waveform Decoder
Generator

LED
DC supply
Optical
Receiver
Bias Tee
Tx Rx
Fig. 2 Experiment setup for downlink NOMA-VLC.

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 operation. As such, the BER performance of the user 1 is
At the Rx, a commercial optical Rx (THORLABS better than that of the user 2. Also evident is that, SC offers
PDA36A) is used to convert the optical signal back into the improved BER performance compared to the OFDM. Also
electrical signal. Note that, we have not used any lenses at shown in the insets, are the constellation diagrams captured
both the Tx and Rx, though for higher received power and a for a transmission span of 17.5 cm. Note that, for the user 1
longer transmission span lenses could be used) to concentrate the constellation of OFDM shown has 16 points in contrast to
and focus light from and onto the LED and the photodetector the constellation of SC. This is due of to the interference from
(PD), respectively. The output of the optical Rx (a PD and a the user 2.
trans-impedance amplifier) is then captured using a real-time
digital oscilloscope for further signal processing in the Matlab
domain. Following frame synchronization and down
conversion, the transmitted data stream for each user is
decoded as illustrated in Fig. 1 (b).

For comparison, we have also investigated the OFDM-

based NOMA VLC system with two users. Note that, the
parameters adopted are the same as those for NOMA-VLC
with signal carrier transmission. All the key system parameters
are provided in Table 1.
TABLE I. SYSTEM PARAMETERS
Parameter Value
LED
x Bandwidth < 5 MHz
Fig. 3 The BER performance against the transmission span for a range of PAR
x Semi-angle of half power ~ 60o
for the downlink NOMA-VLC.
x Transmit power 150 mw

Photodetector
x Active area Ar 13 mm2
x Responsivity R < 0.4 A/W
x Bandwidth 10 MHz
x Field of view of Receiver ~90o
OFDM and Single Carrier
x No. of user 2
x RF carrier 1.25 MHz
x Modulation format 4-QAM
x DFT size 256
x CP size 8

Figure 3 shows the BER performance as a function of the

transmission distance for a range of PAR between the two
users (i.e., 0.16, 0.25 and 0.36). The BER plots are determined
from the average of the two users, which is based on more
than 1 ၮ106 pseudo random data bits. As shown in Fig. 3, the Fig. 4 The BER performance vs the transmission span for the downlink SC
and OFDM VLC and for a PAR of 0.25.
optimal BER performance is achieved with a PAR of 0.25. At
a BER of 1 ၮ103, which is below the forward error correction IV. CONCLUSION
3
limit of 3.8 ၮ10 , the increase in transmission spans are rather In this paper, we proposed and experimentally
small for all three plots, however increasing at BER << 1 ၮ demonstrated a NOMA scheme based on the single carrier
transmission and the frequency domain inter-user interference
103. cancellation for VLC system. Compared with NOMA-VLC
with OFDM modulation, the proposed scheme offered
Next, we investigated the BER performance as a function improved BER performance because of lower PAPR.
of the transmission span for both OFDM and SC schemes
modulations for one and two users and a PAR of 0.25, as
illustrated in Fig. 4. Note that, at the Tx, the user 1 is allocated ACKNOWLEDGMENT
with more power. At the Rx, the data of the user 1 is decoded This work was supported in part by the Chunmiao Project
prior to decoding the data of the user 2. However, in the case of Haixi Institutes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in part by
of not being able to fully recover (i.e. demodulate) the user1’s the National Science Foundation of China under Grant
data, the data of the user 2 cannot be recovered with error-free 61601439, 61571128 and 61501427, in part by External

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