Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing for indoor optical wireless communications using visible light LEDs

Visible light LEDs are being used for indoor optical wireless systems as well as room lighting. In indoor diffuse optical wireless links multipath dispersion limits the maximum transmission data rates. In this paper we investigate OFDM system where multipath induced intersymbol interference (ISI) is reduced, enabling higher data rates. Pilot signals are uniformly inserted into data symbols (subcarriers) and are extracted at the receiver for channel estimation. Predicted and simulated results for the symbol error rate (SER) for an OFDM employing BPSK, QPSK and M-QAM for line of sight (LOS) and diffuse links are presented for a range of pilot signal.