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Visible Light Communication-A Survey of

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 2017 SECOND IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON E LECTRICAL , COMPUTER AND COMMUNICATION T ECHNOLOGIES

Visible Light Communication-A Survey of

Potential Research Challenges and Advancements
Mrinmoyee Mukherjee
St. Francis Institute of Technology,
Department of Information Technology
S.V.P Road, Mumbai-400103, India
mrinmoyeemukherjee@sfitengg.org

Abstract—Wireless optical communication is one of the
most upcoming areas in field of communication. It is
classified into two types-outdoor and indoor wireless
communication. Indoor wireless communication is
called as visible light communication and tries to
combine illumination with communication. The paper
provides a detailed survey about the evolution of
visible light communication technology and open
research challenges faced while implementing visible
light communication.
Keywords—Color Shift keying, On-off Keying, OFDM,
Optical Wireless Communication, Pulse Width
Modulation, Visible Light Communication
I.INTRODUCTION
One of the most recent advancements in wireless
communication is the Optical Wireless Communication
(OWC)-it transmits information with help of light pulses
and consists of three sub-bands-Infrared band that operate
at the near IR frequencies of 750-1600nm, Visible Light
band that operate at 390-750nm and Ultraviolet band that
operate in the 200-280nm band [1]-[3]. Communication
within the visible light band is called as Visible Light
Communication (VLC) and is feasible due to Light
Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Today‘s world is experiencing a
revolution in the area of energy efficient lightening. The
world is now moving toward realizing an idea that will
provide us with both illumination and communication.
The concept comes with the following set of advantages-
freedom from wired mesh, easy to implement where
wiring is difficult, allows the flexibility to get data at any
place where illumination is happening, and also allow to
expand the number of users in a network. All these are
possible with the advancement of solid state lighting
through Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). LEDs are
semiconductor devices that emit either infrared or visible
light when biased with forward current i.e. they help
convert electrical energy to light energy. VLC targets to
bring about communication by the use of present/existing
LED fixtures. The present application concentration of
LEDs is very high; it is used almost everywhere- indicator
lamps, most alphanumeric displays, cameras, remote
controls, indoor lighting, inside airplane as sign and help
indicators, billboards and automobiles brake lights to
name a few. The exhaustive application list of LED is
because of the following advantages-they are extremely
energy efficient as they consume less power and generate
less heat [4], reduce energy consumption by 80% [5],
have longer service life [6]-[7], they are mercury free [8]
and have the ability to work under varied environmental
conditions. According to the recent survey in 2015, the
average luminous efficacy of best in class LED is as high
as 113 lumens/watt and is projected to be around 200
lumens/watt [9] by the year 2020. The paper aims to
provide good survey of the potential research challenges
that are faced by the researchers while implementing
VLC. Section-II focuses on the evolution of VLC
standards since its inspection to the present achieved data
rates using various LEDs. The section also states the
advantages of using VLC and its set of applications areas.
Section-III provides the overview of VLC system and its
open research challenges for SISO and MIMO systems at
the transmitter, channel and receiver side. Section-IV
provides research challenges at the transmitter side and
Section V focusses on the recent progress in the hybrid
VLC system implementations
II.EVOLUTION OF VLC TECHNOLOGY, ITS
STANDARDIZATION ACHIEVED DATA RATES
According to Dilukshan karunatilaka et al [10], the use of
white LED for illumination and communication was
initiated by Tanaka et al in early 2000s in Japan at Keio
University. Table-I lists the history of evolution of VLC

TABLE I. EVOLUTION OF VLC TECHNOLOGY & RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS

Sr. No Year Comment Ref
Visible Light Communication Consortium (VLCC) dedicated to promote research,
[3], [10]-
1 2003 development and standardization of VLC is formed in Japan with the help of some major
[12]
companies

978-1-5090-3239-6/17/$31.00 © 2017 IEEE 1061

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Sr. No Year Comment Ref

CICTR at Penn State proposes to combine Power Line Communication (PLC) with VLC to
2 2006
provide broadband connectivity and illumination for indoor applications
The process of standardization begins. Japan Electronics and Information Technology
3 2007 Industries Association (JEITA) issues two VLC standards-JEITA CP-1221 and JEITA CP- [13]
1222
VLCC began cooperation and coordination with Infrared Data Association (IrDA) and
4 2008
Infrared Communication System Association (ICSA)
VLCC adapted the infrared communication physical layer proposed by IrDA. In sync, hoME
Gigabit Access project funded by European Union started developing OWC as a
5 2009 complimentary technology to RF communication. The project was funded by 19 partner [14] [15]
institutions and proposed to achieve data rate of 1Gbps and 100Mbps respectively for IR and
visible light communication.
The first VLC standard IEEE P802.15.7 published. The proposal includes the link layer and
physical layer design specifications. IEEE P802.15 published standardization protocols for
6 2011 [16] [17]
PHY and MAC layer near range optical wireless communication. PHY types provide
information in the range of 11.67 Kbps to 96 Mbps.
Since then efforts are being made to improve the data rates of VLC by various universities
and institutes.
Research- Universities-Oxford university, Keio University, University of Edinburgh, Boston University,
Organization Sant‘Anna School of advance studies, Yeungnam University, KAIST University, Choshun
[3], [10]
working towards University, Monash University, Tsinghua University
VLC Institutes- NSF Smart Lightening Engineering Research Centre (ERC)-America, The Centre
on Optical Wireless Application (COWA), The Ubiquitous Communication by Light (UC-
Light) Centre

Literature study shows that the data rates have constantly
improved over a period of time. An exhaustive survey of
the achieved data rates for a specified distance and
modulation has been done by Dilukshan karunatilaka et al
[10]. The highest data rate reported by them is of 3.22
Gbps achieved by using Red Green Blue (RGB) LEDs
over a distance of 0.25m. Beyond that a maximum
information rate of 4.5 Gbps [18] is achieved by
Wavelength Division Multiplexed System using RGB-
LED using Carrier-less Amplitude and Phase modulation
(CAP) and RLS based adaptive equalization techniques
for1.5-m indoor free space transmission. An overall data
rate of 4.5 Gbps [19] is successfully demonstrated over 2-
m indoor transmission employing Wavelength Division
Multiplexed (WDM) CAP-64 VLC system using Volterra
nonlinear equalizer for first time. With the ongoing
research in the field of VLC, its future prospects look
bright, only if we can fully overcome some of the major
research challenges. The data rates presently achieved
using different LEDs are-
1. Organic LED (OLED)-Paul H, Zahib Ghassemlooy
and Sujan Rajbhandari [20] use equalization schemes
to achieve a bit rate of 750 kb/s from a bandwidth of
30 KHz and 550 kb/s from a bandwidth of 93 KHz.
The luminous efficacy of OLEDs is around 45 1m/W.
Paul Anthony Haigh et al [21] recorded a high data
rate of 1.4Mbps using 32 level quadrature amplitude
modulation by OLED
2. Micro LEDs (µ-LEDs): They are mostly AlGaN
based and have the potential to be used in high
density parallel communication. Data rates up-to 1.68
Gbps at a distance of 3cm have been demonstrated by
Hyunchae Chun et al [22] employing white light
emitted by blue GaN µ-LEDs and a yellow
fluorescent c polymer.
3. The next type of LED that is hugely used is the
multichip LED. Multichip LED uses more than one
LED chips (typically three-Red, Blue, Green) to emit
white light. Shinichiro Miyazaki et al [23] used
CDMA with RGB multichip LED for improved data
rates. Aiying Yang et al [24] used grouped
modulation schemes using multichip (three) LED to
achieve data rates up-to 50Mbps with OOK
modulation within a transmission length of 1.0m.
4. Resonant Cavity LEDs (RC-LEDs) are the ones that
uses the property of photon quantization within the
planar micro cavities to enhance the spontaneous
emission properties like directionality and intensity
distribution. Developing high brightness RC-LEDs
benefit Visible Light Communication. Recently Chia-
Lung Tsai and Zhong-Fan Xu [25] have demonstrated
data rates of up-to 100 Mbps over a distance of 100
cm using InGaN-based resonant-cavity LEDs making
them suitable potential candidates for VLC.
Since LEDs are already used in many applications, it
makes sense that they be used to serve the dual purpose of
providing communication with illumination. The potential
advantages VLC when compared to Radio Frequency
(RF) communication [11]-[12]- Huge license free
spectrum, Huge bandwidth in the range of terahertz that
can support high speed applications, safe for eyes and
high scalability and re-configurability. The application of
VLC can be broadly categorised into indoor and outdoor
based applications. VLC can be used to provide data via

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reading lamps (white LEDs) provided in the airplanes to
the PDA or mobile phones, creating mobile hotspots for
stationary and quasi-stationary mobile users (mobiles
have to be Li-Fi enabled) to provide data access via LED
fixtures. It can also be safely used in hospitals as it does
not radiate electromagnetic radiations and induce strong
electric field intensity. Outdoor VLC can be used to
provide vehicle to vehicle communication, traffic signal to
vehicle communication, underwater communication and
distributed type of communication. At this point it
becomes clear that VLC has both the required advantages
and potential applications where it can be integrated.
III.THE VLC SYSTEM AND ITS RESEARCH
CHALLENGES
The VLC system can be broadly classified into the
transmitter unit, channel and receiver unit. The transmitter
unit consists of a drive circuit and an LED or Laser Diode.
Now a days the VLC transmitter is an LED luminaire. The
input to the drive circuit are the information bits-typically
in the form of electrical signal. These information signal
are modulated and serve as the forward modulated input
current to the LED/LD. The power or the intensity
(emitted intensity of LED is projected as optical power
emitted per unit solid angle) is directly modulated by
varying the drive current. The emitted power is defined by
the equation (1)
(1)
Where Ep(eV) is the energy of each photon in electron
volts, is the internal quantum efficiency and I(mA) is
the forward current. The LED modulates the input data in
form of electrical current to optical pulses of power P
(mW). The light travels through the channel and is passed
through an optical lens before being focussed onto a
photo-detector or imaging sensor.
The data is delivered to the LED fixtures using Power
Line Communication (PLC) [26]. In such systems a
bridge rectifier regulates the current supply to LED. Since
the data rate of PLC backhaul system is less than the VLC
link capacity, new standards such as HomePlugAV2 or
Power over Ethernet (PoE) that provides data rates in
Gbps are implemented. The VLC receiver are of two
types-the photodiodes used for high data rate applications
and imaging sensor (available in mobile devices) for low
data rate applications. The ―rolling shutter‖ [13], [17]
which works on the principle of row or column scanning
of the matrix of camera sensor is used to receive data.
Once all the column are scanned, they are converted to
binary data. The different types of positioning
configuration for transmitter and receiver are Direct Line
of Sight, Non directed Line of Sight, Diffuse Line of Sight
and Quasi- Diffuse Line of Sight. Directed line of sight
offers the advantage of high power efficiency by using
narrow beam efficiency and does not suffer from
multipath propagation but are susceptible to blocking and
are more suitable for point to point than point to
multipoint configurations. A. M. Khalid et al [27] in their
paper titled, ―1-Gb/s transmission over a phosphorescent
white LED by using rate-adaptive Discrete Multitone
modulation‖ have demonstrated data rates of 1Gpbs over
a range of 10 to 50 cm using white LED and Discrete
Multi-Tone (DMT) signal. The next type of positioning
system is Non-directed Line of Sight which uses wide
beam transmitters and receivers with wide Field of View
(FOV). This provides the advantage of increased coverage
area and is suitable for applications that provides data
connectivity to range of portable devices within the
coverage area (point to multipoint based applications).
Visible light is absorbed by dark objects and reflected by
light. This property is exploited in Diffuse LOS type of
configuration where reflections are relied upon to provide
data. Diffuse transmitters points vertically upwards
emitting wide beam and the reciver has a wide FOV. It is
one of the most convenient ype of positioning system but
suffers from severe multipath propagation and Inter
Symbol Interference (ISI). The next type of configuration
is the Quassi Diffuse link and is a type of tracked system
which offers high power efficiency and increased
coverage.
Research challenges in VLC can be broadly classified as
Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) or Single Input-
Single Output (SISO) system based. . When MIMO
systems are used, it becomes important to monitor and
control medium access, device association/disassociation
timings and device mobility issues. Hence Medium
Access Control (MAC) layer issues come into picture.
IEEE 802.15.8 [28] proposes three types of link layer
topologies viz. Peer-to-peer, Broadcast and Star. This part
of the paper focuses on the physical layer research
challenges.

TABLE II. VLC SYSTEM RESEARCH CHALLENGES

The VLC System Research Challenges
List of Ref.
part
Development of various modulation and coding techniques to control the flicker and
Illumination of LED
dimming properties of LED according to IEEE 802.15.7
1. To increase the transmitted power of an LED within the eye safety standards, to
Transmitter
increase the distance between transmitter and receiver.
(LED)
2.LED non-linearity and bandwidth issues

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The VLC System Research Challenges

List of Ref.
part
3.Light off mode [10]-
4. Dimming and Flicker control [12] [17]
1.Combat effects such as shadowing, path-loss, multipath propagation effects (ie. impact [28]
The wireless
of reflected paths on performance of system) and background noise effects [29]
channel
2.The multiple access techniques and user mobility issues are also a part of the channel
Receiver Receiver noise and Signal to Noise ratio
1.Challenges in commercialization of VLC
2.Upgrading current infrastructures to support VLC
Other
3. Integration with backhaul for VLC downlink with new standards such as
HomePlugAV2 and PoE

IV.OPEN RESEARCH CHALLENGES
Modulation techniques like Color Shift Keying (CSK)
designed specifically for VLC and Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing (OFDM) techniques are gaining lot
of importance for high speed data communication. Design
of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems using
imaging and non-imaging sensors [30] using VLC MIMO
techniques like Spatial Multiplexing [31]-[32], Spatial
Modulation [33]-[35] has gained lot of attention from
researchers. Another area of interest for MIMO systems is
Optical beam-forming [36] that helps to direct multiple
transmitter signals of MIMO systems in a specified
direction of the receiver and transmitter signal separation.
Performing optical beam-forming while adhering to the
illumination standards set by IEEE 802.15.7 is an
important area of research for VLC. Research is also
moving in the direction of creating and designing resource
allocation schemes that are power efficient and reduces
Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) and Inter-Channel
Interference (ICI) for hybrid CDMA and OFDM. The
following section highlights in particular the challenges
while implementing various modulation techniques to
control the dimming and flicker issues at the transmitter.
IEEE 802.15.7 has specified a three Physical layers
(PHY-I, PHY-II and PHY-III) and a total of 30
modulation and coding schemes. The most commonly
used coding schemes for each PHY mode are the Run
Length Limited (RLL) line coding schemes and channel
coding schemes for Forward Error Correction (FEC).
PHY-I [17] establishes data rate in the range of 11.67 to
266.6 kb/s employing Forward Error Correction (FEC) by
using Reed Solomon (RS) and Convolution Codes (CC).
PHY-II can achieve data rates from 1.25 Mbps up-to 96
Mbps and uses RS codes for FEC while PHY-III can
achieve data rates in the range of 12Mbps to 96 Mbps.
The achievable data rates by any of the above PHY layer
depends on the choice of modulation scheme, RLL code
and optical clock rate. More information about the PHY
operating modes can be found in [22]-[37]. LED emits
incoherent light, and hence the user data is modulated into
the instantaneous optical power of LED. This is known as
Intensity Modulation (IM). Also since the information is
carried with light intensity [35] (it‘s a real valued,
unipolar signal), the data cannot be encoded into the phase
or amplitude of the signal. Hence phase or amplitude
modulation techniques cannot be applied here.
On-Off Keying (OOK) - Unipolar Non-return to Zero is
the simplest Intensity Modulated-Direct Detection
(IM/DD) modulation technique to achieve data rates
beyond 100Mbps. Here, ‗0‘ is treated as absence of pulse
and ‗1‘ is treated as presence of light pulse. Hence LED
needs to switch between high (on position) and low (off
position). This can create long runs of ‗0‘ and ‗1‘. Three
main problems are present in OOK- Flicker issues,
Dimming control and Inter symbol interference. Flicker
refers to the fluctuations in the light intensity or brightness
level of light. Flickering effects reduces the rate at which
light intensity changes. Since flickering is harmful for
humans, its effect is overcome by Run Length Limited
(RLL) line coding schemes like Manchester, 4B6B,
8B10B [37]. RLL provides DC balance for random data
input thus providing equal number of 0s and 1s. For FEC,
Reed Solomon (RS), Convolution Codes (CC) are used
Flickering can be avoided if the changes in the brightness
falls within a Maximum Flickering Time period (MFTP)
of 200 Hz (MFTP < 5ms) [38]. Thus mitigating the
‗Flickering issues‘ is one of the important research
challenges in VLC. Study shows that pre and post
equalizations techniques are used to mitigate the effects of
‗Flickering. The table below lists the recent progress in
implementing OOK modulating schemes that address
flicker issues. OOK suffers from delay spread that
produces Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) in a multipath
environment reducing data rates in the range of 10 Mbps
[42]. The data rates achieved using OOK-NRZ by Honglei
Li et al. is 340 Mb/s using post equalization circuits using
passive and active equalizers [43] resulting in BER below
2 × 10−3 limit.
TABLE III. ACHIEVED DATA RATES USING OOK
MODULATION
Modulation Achieved
Comment Ref
Type Data Rate
OOK-NRZ 340 Mb/s at
The experiment uses
with white 43 cm with
LED bit-error-
phosphoresces white
[39]
LED with post
and PIN ratio of 2 ×
equalization circuit
photo- 10−3

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detector signal using the intensity of three colors in LED and relies
The data rate is achieved on color space chromaticity diagram as defined by CIE
using simple DPPM 1931 [47]. IEEE 802.15.7 divides the color spectrum into
OOK with
127.5 kbps techniques and by [40] seven functional bands in order to provide support for
OLED
exploiting the frequency multiple LED color choice for communication. The
response of OLED,
anatomy of the CIE chromaticity can be understood from
OOK-NRZ 500Mb/s at Post equalization
with RGB a BER of techniques have been [41] the diagram as illustrated in Fig. 1. The CSK modulation
LED 10-3 used is performed using three main steps- a. determine the
NOTE: Most of the commercial LEDs used for VLC RGB constellation diagram based on the centre
have limited modulation bandwidth of 3~5MHz. To wavelength of the emitted light b. mapping the data bits to
increase the data rate the modulation bandwidth of LEDs chromaticity and c. determine the transmitted intensities.
needs to be improved through the techniques of pre and CSK has the advantage of providing a constant total
post equalizations. This it-self is again an area of research power from all CSK modulated light sources, although
challenge. each light source in a multiple LED unit have different
instantaneous output power [35]. This diminishes the
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM): PWM is employed on a flicker issues associated with CSK modulation.
periodic train of square pulses and is a technique that has
been proposed for dimming control for indoor VLC
systems. In PWM the widths of the pulses (the time
parameter on x-axis) are changed based on the required
amount of dimming while the presence of pulses (the
amplitude on y-axis) carry the modulated signal in the
form of a square wave. Hence brightness of LED is
controlled by adjusting the duty cycle of the pulses. The
period of waveform signal p(t) is equal to TPWM, and for
0≤t≤ TPWM, p(t) is given by [44]- Authors have shown
that any dimming level from 0% to 100% can be obtained
with high PWM frequency. The advantage of PWM
includes- No color shift as it is capable of achieving the
dimming control level without changing the intensity
levels of light pulses. The limitation though is the low
data rate. Research is going on to combine PWM with
Discrete Multitone by using QAM on DMT subcarriers.

Pulse Position Modulation (PPM): In PPM the entire

symbol duration of t is equally sub-divided into n slots of
duration t/n, and a pulse is transmitted in one of the
equally spaced slots. The placement of the pulse within a
fixed slot identifies the transmitted symbol. The
modulation schemes suffers from lower spectral
efficiency and low data rates. To overcome these
drawbacks research is going on variation of PPM.
Modulation methods listed in the literature are-
Overlapping PPM (OPPM), Variable PPM (VPPM),
Multi-pulse PPM (MPPM), Differential PPM (DPPM),
Differential Overlapping PPM (DOPPM). A good
understanding of these modulation techniques along with
the achieved data rates can be found in [10], [17], [35],
[45], [46]. The literature points that variations
combinations of PPM can be used to achieve various
dimming control levels and is one of the prime research
areas.
Color Shift keying (CSK): CSK is specifically designed
for VLC to overcome the drawback of PWM. Here bit
patterns are encoded to wavelength combinations. The
modulation techniques uses RGB LED and modulates the
Fig 1. CIE color space chromaticity diagram
In CSK, k = log2M incoming information bits are grouped
together for a M-ary color coding scheme. These symbols
are then mapped onto a two-dimension color constellation
point in the form of a x-y color coordinate set [47]. The
color coordinates set are depend on the by the power (or
intensity-power emitted per unit solid angle) of the three
light sources; hence, these x-y color coordinates are
converted to a three-element optical intensity vector
before transmission, which represent the power of the
light sources [48]-[51]. Presently research is moving in
the direction of new IEEE 802.15.7 CSK modulation
formats based on four colors [50]. Research is also
moving in the direction of using CSK and CDMA based
transmission technique using mobile phone cameras [51].
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM):
OFDM is a type of multi-carrier modulation technique
that uses multiple orthogonal sub-carriers to transmit
parallel data. The technique significantly increases the
data rate, reduces Inter Symbol Interferences (ISI), and

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the need for complex equalizers for RF based
communications [10], [17], [27], [52]. Data rates in the
range of 3Gbps have been demonstrated using single
LED-OFDM combination [53]. Conventional RF signals
are both complex and bipolar in nature. In VLC the signal
has to be real and unipolar. Number of schemes in VLC
are proposed in order to provide a real and unipolar signal
like U-OFDM [54], Flip-OFDM [55], spectrally
factorized pptical OFDM [56]. The most common among
all is the use of Hermitian symmetry to convert the
complex bipolar signal to real bipolar signal at the
expense of doubling the required bandwidth [13]. The real
bipolar signal are converted to unipolar signal using DC
biasing (DCO-OFDM systems). These systems introduce
the problem of high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR).
Vast amount of research is devoted in the study of various
techniques to overcome the PAPR problem (caused due to
non-linearity of LED) and exploit it for the illumination.
The various proposed techniques to overcome PAPR
problems are- use of Single Carrier with Frequency
Domain Equalization (SCFDE), Asymmetrically Clipped
Optical (ACO-) SCFDE, Repetition and Clipping Optical
(RCO-) SCFDE and Decomposed Quadrature Optical
(DQO-) SCFDE. The above methods have shown better
BER and PAPR performance. Apart from PAPR limited
dimming support is another area of problem and
continuous research is going on. Dimming control is
provided by [57] using PWM. With ongoing research
OFDM for VLC demonstrates extreme potential for
achieving high data rates in Gbps using single LEDs.
To sum up the following can be listed as few of the main
challenges in design of VLC system and its
commercialization-
1. Improving the nonlinear relationships between
current and output power in high data rate
applications.
2. Transmitter array design and optimization
3. Backhaul integration of LED with PLC system
4. Use of efficient modulation techniques like OFDM
and CSK to overcome dimming control and flickering
problems and ISI for MIMO systems
5. Increase the data rate and coverage area for high data
rate applications in the range of Gbps using imaging
sensors for SISO and MIMO applications
6. Combining non-imaging and imaging sensors in
receivers to better data rates
7. Indoor channel modeling and study of channel effects
like multipath fading
8. Multiple access techniques for uplink connectivity
9. Handover techniques for smooth switch of
technologies between Wi-Fi-VLC-RF.
10. Security issues for different classes of VLC devices
like infrastructure to mobile, mobile to infrastructure
and mobile to mobile.
1066
11. Novel multiple access techniques for VLC uplink and
downlink
12. VLC-PIC integration for broadband communication
13. Implementation of spatial modulation and spatial shift
keying
V.THE HYBRID VLC SYSTEM RECENT
ADVANCEMENTS
Sihua Shao [58] et el in their paper titled, ―Design of a
visible-light-communication enhanced Wi-Fi system‖,
proposed and implemented hybrid Wi-Fi VLC system.
The implementation used VLC channel for the downlink
and Wi-Fi for the uplink. The implemented system
enabled internet access without any reconfiguration at the
server side. The authors were able to demonstrate a data
rate of up-to 54.5 Mbps by varying distance between 2 to
7m. Shaoen Wu, Honggang Wang, and Chan-Hyun Youn
[59] in their paper titled ―Visible Light Communications
for 5G Wireless Networking Systems: From Fixed to
Mobile Communications‖ proposes visible light
communication as a potential access option for 5G
wireless communication. The paper provides detailed
literature survey of the potential
advantages/disadvantages, challenges configurations for
the use of VLC for 5G. Takayuki Nishio, Masahiro
Morikura, and Koji Yamamoto in their paper titled
―Heterogeneous Media Communications for Future
Wireless Local Area Network [60] proposes
heterogeneous media communications where multiple
wireless and wired technologies collaborate to provide
abundant bandwidth to increase the data rates and spectral
efficiency of the system. The authors also discuss about
the protocols in MAC layer and Network layer for
Heterogeneous media system. Jian Song et al in their
paper [61] titled ―A cost effective approach for ubiquitous
broadband access based on hybrid PLC-VLC system‖
proposes a novel cost effective framework for
uninterrupted ubiquitous bi directional indoor broadband
access with integrated VLC-PLC technology. The above
team of researchers successfully validated the integrated
VLC-PLC system within a distance of 3m with a data rate
of over 5Mbps, with a bit error rate below 10 -5. Hao Ma,
Lutz Lampe, Steve Hranilovic in their work [62] titled,
―Subcarrier allocation in Hybrid Visible Light and Power
Line Communication system‖, uses OFDM subcarrier
allocation techniques to increase the data rate for multi-
user configuration. Research work is also going on for
design and implementation of Room Division Multiplexed
(RDM) based VLC system. Researchers Zhitong Huang
and Yuefeng Ji [63] in their paper titled ―Design and
demonstration of room division multiplexed based hybrid
VLC network‖ have successfully improved VLC network
throughput.
 2017 SECOND IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON E LECTRICAL , COMPUTER AND COMMUNICATION T ECHNOLOGIES
VI.CONCLUSION
Disadvantages of radio frequency communication like
licensing and capacity crunch have given rise to wireless
optical communication. The advantages of wireless
optical communication like free spectrum usage, huge
bandwidth and energy efficient low power ends have
made it largely popular. This paper discussed the
evolution of indoor optical wireless communication
popularly known as VLC which can be used for both
illumination and communication. The paper primarily
focussed on the open research areas in the field of VLC.
The future of VLC looks brilliant with increasing
popularity of LEDs.
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