This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LPT.2014.2364955, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Network Architecture of a High-speed Visible

Light Communication Local Area Network
Yiguang Wang, Nan Chi, Yuanquan Wang, Li Tao, and Jianyang Shi

AbstractA novel ultra high-speed LED visible light

communication (VLC) local area network to provide beyond 10
Gb/s optical wireless access based on star topology architecture is
proposed and experimentally demonstrated for massive users.
Fiber link is used as the backbone of the bi-directional VLC
network. The hybrid access protocol is utilized: frequency
division multiplexing (FDM) for downlink and uplink fiber
transmission, and time division multiplexing (TDM) for
bidirectional VLC transmission. A full-duplex VLC network for 8
VLC access points (VAPs) has been successfully demonstrated
with the total throughput of 8 Gb/s. Each VAP is offered 500 Mb/s
downstream and 500 Mb/s upstream. The measured BERs of
downlink and uplink for all the VAPs are under 7% FEC limit of
3.8x10-3 over 25 km SSMF and 65 cm free space, clearly validating
the promising potential of the proposed VLC network
architecture for future 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s wireless access.
Index Termsvisible light communication, network
architecture

I. INTRODUCTION

ver the past few years, the demand of high-speed

wireless access, especially in indoor environments, keeps
increasing rapidly with the rising popularity of a multitude of
multimedia applications. Visible light communication (VLC)
based on light emitting diode (LED) has been a promising
candidate for indoor high-speed wireless access, as LEDs with
better modulation bandwidth can combine illumination and
data transmission together [1-2]. Outperforming traditional
wireless access such as WiFi, WiMAX and radio-over-fiber
(RoF), VLC offers several advantages such as cost-effective,
license-free and high security. The latest report has
demonstrated the VLC transmission with the highest data rate
of 3Gb/s using a single LED [1], which makes it feasible for a
single LED to support Gbit/s wireless access.
However, most of the investigations about VLC are focused
on point-to-point transmission [3-5], and VLC access networks
are commonly neglected. In a practical scenario such as a huge
office building, when VLC local network consisting of
hundreds VLC access points (VAPs) is needed to provide
beyond 10Gbit/s access service for massive users, the design of
a VLC network architecture has become a big challenge. There
are several investigations reported on VLC networks [6-9]. A
This work was partially supported by NHTRDP (863 Program) of China (No.
2013AA013603), NNSF of China (No. 61177071).
Yiguang Wang, Yuanquan Wang, Li Tao, Jianyang Shi and Nan Chi are with
Department of Communication Science and Engineering, Fudan University,
Shanghai 200433, China. (e-mail: nanchi@fudan.edu.cn)

VLC network integrated with power line communication (PLC)

at 1 Mb/s data rate has been proposed in [6]. Limited by the
inherent data rate of PLC, VLC network over PLC cannot
provide Gbit/s access service. A bidirectional VLC prototype
integrated with 1000BASE-T Ethernet is presented in [7].
However, the system operates in half-duplex mode based on
TDM for single user, and the total data rate is only 500Mb/s. It
is known that 10GBASE-T Ethernet can provide 10 Gb/s
transmission for VLC access networks. By using power over
Ethernet, data transmission and power supply can be realized
simultaneously. However, when hundreds of VAPs are
supported in a huge building, the capacity requirement of the
VLC network could be further increased to 40 Gb/s or 100 Gb/s.
Therefore, optical fiber is a better solution for ultra high-speed
VLC access due to its much larger modulation bandwidth.
Additionally, lots of optical devices at lower cost have been
applied to high speed optical transmission systems in recent
years. It can be foreseen that the cost of the VLC network based
on optical fiber will be continuously reduced. A 2.5 Gb/s
bidirectional in-building network over SMF and a laser pointer
laser (LPL) has been proposed in [8]. But the multi-access
scheme is not discussed, and the Class IIIa based LPL suffers
from high cost and could be dangerous to humans eyes [8]. We
have presented a unidirectional VLC system integrated with
PON [9]. However, this system is not a LED centric VLC
access network, but an integration of VLC and PON. The PON
and the VLC signals are simultaneously transmitted in the fiber
link, and then respectively sent for wired or wireless users.
Moreover, this system does not consider the uplink and the
multiple access scheme either.
In this paper, we propose a novel full-duplex VLC local area
network based on star topology architecture to provide beyond
10 Gb/s wireless access for massive users. Fiber link is used as
the backbone of the VLC networks to directly connect LED
lamps. We also propose a sophisticated access protocol for the
full-duplex VLC network: frequency division multiplexing
(FDM) for downlink and uplink fiber transmission, and time
division multiplexing (TDM) for bidirectional VLC
transmission in each VAP. As far as we know, for the first time
this hybrid access protocol is utilized in high speed VLC access
networks. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
is utilized to obtain high spectral efficiency. Based on the novel
architecture, a full-duplex VLC network experiment is
demonstrated. 8 sub-bands at the bandwidth of 100 MHz are
used for 8 VAPs over 2.5 GHz frequency span. In each VAP, 4
time slots are assigned for 4 users. The total throughput of the

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
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bi-directional VLC network is 8 Gb/s. Each VAP is offered 500

Mb/s downstream and 500 Mb/s upstream. The measured bit
error rates (BERs) of downlink and uplink for all the VAPs are
under 7% pre-forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3.8x10-3
through 25 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) and 65 cm
free space propagation. When continuing to increase the
bandwidth and the number of sub-bands, the proposed VLC
network is scalable to provide future 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s
wireless access for massive users.

fiber and VLC is realized in the LED lamps.

In the downlink, the data for different VAPs is firstly
modulated to the pre-allocated sub-bands at the CO, and then
transmitted through fiber link. After split by an optical coupler,
the optical signal is detected in the LED lamp of each VAP. The
received signals are passing through a band pass filter (BPF) to
filter out its data from the pre-assigned sub-band. The selected
signals are then down-converted by a mixer for further VLC
transmission. After free space channel, the signal is received by
different users. Each user picks out his own data from the
pre-assigned time slot for further demodulation. In the uplink,
the user in each VAP transmits his data at the pre-assigned time
slot to the LED lamp. Then the up-conversion is realized by a
mixer and a BPF. The up-converted signals are modulated to an
optical carrier for uplink fiber transmission. The upstream
optical signals from different VAPs are combined by the optical
coupler, and transmitted to the CO.
When massive users are simultaneously supported, the
synchronization of the whole VLC network will be a key
problem. For FDM based fiber link, synchronization between
different access points is not needed, which is a well-known
advantage of FDM. However, for TDM, it is quite important to
realize synchronization between different users. In a VPA,
different users are assigned the precise time slot to transmit
their data to avoid conflict. Synchronous heads are also applied
to the frames of different users, so that the signal from different
users can be selected from the accurate time slot.

II. VLC NETWORKS INFRASTRUCTURE

Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of the VLC network. To
realize high-speed VLC access for massive users in a huge
building, the architecture of the VLC network is designed to be
star topology. As backbone of the VLC network, fiber is used to
connect with each LED lamp directly.
LED lamp
VAP1

LED lamp
VAP2

Fiber
User 1 User 2
LED lamp
VAP3

Down Link

User 3 User 4

OC

CO Up Link

User 5 User 6

Fig. 1: the schematic diagram of the VLC network

VAP1

User1

User2

Sub3

III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND RESULTS

frequency

TS2

frequency

The experimental setup of the VLC network is shown in Fig. 3.

In the downlink, original data are firstly mapped into 32QAM
signals at the CO, and OFDM modulation is then employed.
The generated OFDM baseband signals are up-converted to 8
sub-bands over 2.5 GHz frequency span for 8 VAPs. The center
frequencies of the 8 sub-bands are 62.5 MHz, 187.5 MHz,
312.5 MHz, 437.5 MHz, 1062.5 MHz, 1565.5 MHZ, 2062.5
MHz and 2437.5 MHz, and the bandwidth of each sub-band is
100 MHz. In the proposed VLC network, the central frequency
of the sub-band can be chosen adaptively base on the practical
requirement. The OFDM signals are generated by an arbitrary
waveform generator (AWG, Tektronix 7122) at 5 GSa/s.

TS2

TS1

Sub1 Sub2 Sub3

time

VAP2

time

User3

User4

Sub2
frequency
TS1

frequency

TS2

frequency
TS2

TS1

time

time

time

Fig. 2: the multiple access scheme of the VLC network

Fig. 2 shows the multiple access scheme of the VLC network.

FDM is used in the downlink and uplink fiber transmission to
make full use of the high capacity of the optical fiber.
Sub-bands located at different center frequencies are assigned
for different VAPs. In each VAP, TDM is implemented for
bi-directional VLC transmission. The connection between the
f1

p/2

...

S/P
IFFT
Add CP
P/S

QAM
mapping

...

User 1 downlink

Central
Office

EA
1548.49nm

LD

S/P

Remove CP

P/S
FFT

QAM
Demapping

...

IM

SSMF

1548.49nm
-30
-40
-50
-60

1548.3

1548.4

1548.5

1548.6

1548.7

Wavelength (nm)
A

EA
620nm

DML
1545.04nm

RGB
LED

APD

20

UL, After SSMF

Sub 3

-20

-40

-10

APD

UL, DML

-30

-80

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Frequency (MHz)

500

-50

1544.9

1545.0

1545.1

1545.2

Wavelength (nm)
A

-90
0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

Frequency (MHz)

RGB LED

DSP

Time Switch
EA

LPF

OFDM
modulation

DL, After VLC

-40

40

0
400

OFDM
modulation

OFDM
Demodulation

-20

DL, Red
UL, Green

60

20

-80

-60

DL, After SSMF

-70

-50

-100

Sub1-4 Sub5 Sub6 Sub7Sub8

-60

-40

-60

80

-30
-40

1545.04nm

LPF

RGB
LED

Bias

-20

-20

EA

User 3

LED lamp

DSP

Time Switch

Bias

VAP 8

40

OFDM
Demodulation

RGB
LED

UL

DL, Laser Diode

Bias

LPF

BPF

EA

Up Link

PD

Optical Power (dBm)

BPF

f3

VAP 4

EA

-20

PD

VAP 3

Circulator

f1

Electrical Power (dBm)

B
Optical Power
(dBm)

-10

VAP 2

Down Link

DL

APD
Mixer

User 1 uplink
p/2

User 1

VAP 3

VAP 1

Electrical Power (dBm)

time

TS2

frequency
TS1

time

Electrical Power (dBm)

TS1

Free space

frequency

Fiber

Amplitude (a.u.)

Metro
Network

-60

520nm

620nm

-80

-100

450

500

550

600

650

700

750

Wavelength (nm)
A

800

100

200

300

400

Frequency (MHz)

500

Fig. 3: The experimental setup of the proposed VLC access networks. (LD: laser diode, IM: intensity modulator, EA: electrical amplifier, SSMF: standard single
mode fiber, VAP: VLC access point, PD: photodiode, BPF: bandpass filter, LPF: lowpass filter, APD: avalanche photodiode, DML: directly modulated laser)

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LPT.2014.2364955, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

sub-bands and time slots, the data from different users are
respectively picked out for demodulation. The electrical
spectrum of the uplink signal for sub-band 3 is shown in inset B
in Fig. 3. The experimental picture of the VLC network is
presented in Fig. 4.
The downlink performance of the VLC network is firstly
evaluated. Fig. 5 shows the BER performances of all the 8
sub-bands at -4dBm received optical power. It can be found that
the BERs of all sub-bands are under the 7% FEC limit of
3.8x10-3. There is negligible performance difference between
the sub-bands at low and high frequency, because the output of
the AWG has a little attenuation at high frequency components.
0.01

DL: 25km SMF+VLC

1E-3

BER

3.8e-3

1E-4
1

Sub-band
Index
Sub-band Number

Fig. 5 BER of all the 8 sub-bands

0.01

AWG

BER

After an electrical amplifier (EA), the signals are used to

drive an optical intensity modulator (IM). A laser diode (LD) at
the wavelength of 1548.49 nm is used as the optical source.
The inset A in Fig. 3 shows the optical spectrum after IM. An
optical circulator is utilized to select downtream and upstream
signals.After 25 km SSMF, an optical coupler is used to
seperate the downstream signals and send them to each VAP. In
the VAP, the optical signals are detected by a photodiode (PD)
in the LED lamp. The electrical spectrum of the received
signals is shown in inset D in Fig. 3. After a BPF, the selected
signal is down-converted by a mixer for further VLC
transmission. In VLC downlink, after low pass filter (LPF) the
down-converted signals are amplified by an EA (Mini-circuits
ZHL-6A+), combined with DC bias, and applied to drive the
RGB LED (Cree PLCC). Here, the red chip of the RGB LED at
the center wavelength of 620 nm is used to carry useful
information, while the blue and green chip are only supplied
with DC to maintain white color illumination. The optical
spectrum of the red chip of the RGB LED is shown in inset E in
Fig. 3. After 65 cm free space, the signals are detected by an
avalanche photodiode (Hamamatsu APD, C5331) at the user
side, and then recorded by a commercial digital oscilloscope
(OSC) (Agilent 54855A).The user selects his own data from the
pre-assigned time slot for offline OFDM demodulation and
digital signal processing (DSP). In free space channel, lens
(100-mm focus length, 70-mm diameter) and red filter are used.
The electrical spectrum of the signal after VLC downlink
transmission is shown in inset F in Fig. 3.

3.8e-3

VLC UL
DL, LED

OSC

APD

DL: SMF+VLC, Sub1 w UL

DL: SMF+VLC, Sub1 w/o UL
DL: SMF+VLC, Sub4 w UL
DL: SMF+VLC, Sub8 w UL

1E-3

VLC DL

circulator

IM

PD
DML

-8

UL, LED1

UL, LED2

Fig. 4 the experimental picture of the VLC network

In the uplink, original data are firstly passed to QAM and

OFDM encoder, and pre-equalized to compensate the
frequency attenuation of the LED. Another AWG (Tektronix
710) is ultilized to generate the upstream OFDM signals. Then
the OFDM signals are combined with a DC bias to drive a
RGB LED. In the uplink, the green chip of the RGB LED (Cree
PLCC) at the center wavelength of 520 nm is used to carry
information, while the other two chips are only supplied with
DC. The optical spectrum is shown in inset F in Fig. 3. Each
user transmits his data at the pre-assigned time slot. Over free
space channel, the upstream signals from different users are
detected by an APD in the LED lamp. A directly modulated
laser (DML) at the wavelength of 1545.04 nm is used as optical
source for uplink. The upstream signals of each VAP are
up-converted to its assigned sub-band by a mixer and a BPF.
Then the upstream optical signals from different VAPs are
combined by an optical coupler, and transmitted over 25 km
SSMF. The upstream signals are detected by a PD at the CO,
and recorded by an OSC. According to the pre-assigned

-7

-6

-5

-4

Received Optical
Power (dBm)
A
Fig. 6 BER versus received optical power for sub-band 1, 4, and 8

At the VAP, the received optical power at the photodiode has

great influence on the further VLC transmission. Therefore, we
measure the BER vs. the received optical power of sub-band 1,
4, and 8 after fiber transmission, as shown in Fig. 6. The BERs
are under the 7% FEC limit of 3.8x10-3 when the received
optical power is -5dBm or higher. We also measured the BER
performance of the sub-band 1 without uplink as shown in Fig.
6. It can be seen that there is almost no interference induced by
bidirectional fiber and VLC transmission. Because in fiber link,
we use a couple of the optical circulators with high isolation,
and in bidirectional VLC transmission, we use different color
chips for uplink (green) and downlink (red), and the crosstalk
can be filtered out by the R/G/B filter. Then the optical power
after 25 km SMF is fixed at -4dBm, and the VLC transmission
distance is changed to analyze the influence of the free space
channel. The BER versus VLC transmission distance are shown
in Fig. 7. We can see that the BERs of all sub-bands are under
the 7% FEC limit of 3.8x10-3 at 65cm VLC transmission.
Then the performance of the uplink is measured. The

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upstream signals are transmitted through 65 cm free space, and

then received at the CO after 25 km SSMF. To verify the TDM
scheme, we use two LEDs as the different users in VAP3. The
signals of user 1 and user 3 are transmitted at different time
slots, and received by the APD simultaneously. Inset A and
inset B in Fig. 8 show the time-domain signals of user 1 and
user 3, and inset C shows the received TDM signals of user1
and user3. Fig. 8 denotes the uplink BER of user1 and user3 in
VAP3 versus received optical power after fiber BTB and 25 km
SSMF respectively. The BER performances of user 1 and user 3
are almost same. 0.5 dB power penalty is found at 3.8x10-3
between BTB and 25km SSMF transmission.

BER

0.01

only 5 cm, due to the optical power limitation (4.5 mW). The
luminance level of the LED is the key factor for the VLC
transmission distance. The optical power of the utilized RGB
LED is only 1W, and the luminance at 65 cm after focusing lens
is measured: red 37 lx, and green 45 lx. The luminance is far
below the standard value for illumination (400 lx). It is believed
that VLC transmission distance of 2-3 m can be realized by
increasing the optical power or deploying LED array.
In our experiment, only 8 sub-bands are utilized for 8 VAPs
over 2.5 GHz frequency span. It should be noted that the
proposed VLC network is easily scalable. To make full use of
the overall 2.5 GHz frequency span, up to 20 VAPs can be
supported simultaneously. At this case, the total throughput of
the VLC network is increased to 20 Gb/s. As for 10 GHz
frequency span, the number of supported VAPs can be as high
as 80, which shows the great potential to provide future 40 Gb/s
and 100 Gb/s wireless access for massive users.

3.8e-3

IV. CONCLUSIONS
DL: SMF+VLC, Sub1
DL: SMF+VLC, Sub4
DL: SMF+VLC, Sub8

1E-3

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

VLC Transmission
Distance (cm)
A
Fig. 7 BER versus VLC transmission distance of sub-band 1, 4, and 8
0.1

User 1

User 3

0.01

BER

1E-3

User 1 & User 3

BER

0.01

FDM, Sub1
FDM, Sub2
1E-4

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

Power Ratio P2/P1 (dB)

3.8e-3

UL: VLC+ Fiber BTB, User1 of VAP3

UL: VLC+ Fiber BTB, User3 of VAP3
UL: VLC+25km SMF, User1 of VAP3
UL: VLC+25km SMF, User3 of VAP3

1E-3

-8

-7

-6

-5

In this paper, we propose a novel ultra high-speed VLC local

area network based on star topology architecture for massive
users. Fiber link is used as the backbone of the VLC network.
The hybrid access protocol is utilized: FDM for downlink and
uplink fiber transmission, and TDM for bidirectional VLC
transmission. In the bi-directional VLC network experiment, 8
sub-bands are allocated for 8 VAPs, and, 4 time slots are
assigned for 4 users VLC access in each VAP. The total
throughput of uplink and downlink for the VLC network is 8
Gb/s. The measured BERs of downlink and uplink for all the
users are both under 7% FEC limit of 3.8x10-3 through 25 km
SSMF and 65 cm free space propagation. The results proof the
potential and feasibility of the VLC networks architecture to
offer beyond 10 Gb/s VLC access service for massive users.
REFERENCES

-4

Received Optical
A Power (dBm)
Fig. 8 the uplink BER of user 1 and user 3 vs. received optical power. Inset A:
the time-domain signal of user 1; inset B: the time-domain signal of user 3;
inset C: the TDM signals of user1 and user3. Inset D: BER vs. power ratio

Compared to FDM, TDM is a better choice for VLC access,

because in FDM the power competition between multiple
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60 MHz) in [1], Gbit/s VLC access service for each user can be
easily supported. The transmission distance using micro LED is

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