Performance of a spread spectrum infrared transmission system under ambient light interference

Indoor wireless infrared transmission is severely impaired by noise and interference produced by artificial ambient light. The interference produced by fluorescent lamps driven by electronic ballasts causes very large power penalties. In this paper spread spectrum techniques are proposed to combat the penalties caused by artificial light interference. Analytical, simulation and experimental results of bit error rate versus signal-to-noise ratio are presented for a 1 Mb/s spread spectrum wireless infrared system. The results show that spread spectrum techniques reduce the degradation due to artificial light interference