Channel reuse strategies for indoor infrared wireless communications

We examine systems of fixed-channel reuse for base stations in an indoor infrared wireless communication system. The following techniques are compared: time-division multiple access (TDMA) using on-off keying (OOK) or pulse-position modulation (PPM); frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) using binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) or quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK); code-division multiple access (CDMA) using OOK with direct-sequence spreading by m-sequences or optical orthogonal codes (OOCs). We define a parameter γ, which equals the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for unit optical path gain and is proportional to the square of the transmitted average optical power. Using measured pathloss data, it is found that in a system using hexagonal cells and a reuse factor of three, for cell radii above 3 m, TDMA with OOK or 2-PPM, and CDMA using OOCs all require approximately the same γ to achieve a worst-case bit-error rate (BER) of 10^-9 within a cell. Using TDMA with 4-PPM results in a 6-dB decrease in the required value of γ. CDMA using m-sequences requires an increase in γ of 5 dB over TDMA using OOK, and FDMA with BPSK requires an increase of 12 dB. For a given reuse factor N in the noise-limited regime, the required value of γ decreases in inverse proportion to N² for TDMA schemes and inversely with N for FDMA and CDMA schemes. For cell radii below 3 m, cochannel interference dominates the systems using TDMA, FDMA, and CDMA with an OOC, resulting in an irreducible BER above 10^-9 at cell radii below 1.5 m. Only CDMA with m-sequences does not develop an irreducible BER, making it the only choice for cell radii below 1.5 m