An Indoor Broadband Broadcasting System Based on PLC and VLC

Visible light communication (VLC) using the light-emitting diode (LED) will become an appealing alternative to the radio frequency communication technology for indoor wireless broadband broadcasting. However, the LED lamps should access to the backbone information network and this requirement is not easily satisfied. Power line communication (PLC) systems utilize the ubiquitous power line network to power the LED lamps while serving as the backbone network for the VLC systems naturally. In this paper, we propose a novel and cost-effective indoor broadband broadcasting system based on the deep integration of PLC and VLC. The proposed scheme significantly reduces the complexity of the VLC network protocol, and requires much less modification to the current infrastructure, while providing better signal coverage. A two-lamp network demo is implemented and the performance evaluation for the proposed scheme is carried out in the laboratory. The proposed scheme is an appealing solution for the indoor family broadcasting, and could be well extended to the scenarios including the hospitals, shopping malls, stadiums, music halls, and etc.