A positioning compatible multi-service transmission system based on the integration of VLC and PLC

As the shortage of spectrum is becoming a serious problem to the wireless communication, visible light communication (VLC) is attracting widespread attention. However, the accession to the backbone network is likely to completely modify the communication network, thus leading to a great cost. Fortunately, the technology of power line communication (PLC) is a perfect match to VLC, which provides power supply and connection for VLC to the backbone network. In this paper, we take an integration of VLC and PLC into consideration and mainly focus on a communication framework with multifunction. In the case of not making a big modification to the origin network, a direct re-transmission concept is considered and two implementation schemes which differ in frequency and time domain are proposed. A demonstration platform is built which suggests that both schemes have the ability to support positioning and multi-service transmission in a high data rate with no big modification of current power line network.