J. -P. M. G. Linnartz, X. Deng and P. Van Voorthuisen, “Impact of Dynamic LED Non-linearity on DCO-OFDM Optical Wireless Communication,” IEEE Communications Letters, 2021
Abstract: DC-Offset Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) is a popular modulation method for Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) as it can assign specific power levels and constellations to different subcarrier frequencies across the low-pass response of the LED. However, LEDs exhibit dynamic non-linearities to which OFDM is very sensitive. As LED signals are subject to non-linear memory effects in photon generation, different OFDM subcarriers experience different amounts of distortion. This letter translates the LED behavior into a communication channel model for OFDM modulation. It gives an experimentally verified expression for the Signal-to-Distortion Ratio (SDR) as it varies per subcarrier in OFDM systems.
