Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 228 (2021) 166195

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Optik
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijleo

Original research article

Tunnel visible light communication system utilizing nonlinear

suppression technique
Dong Wang a, b, *, Chao Li a, b, Yinghe Wang c, Zhe Kang d, e
a
School of Information Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, 250022, China
b
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Network-based Intelligent Computing, Jinan, 250022, China
c
School of Electronics & Information Engineering, Shanghai Dianji University, Shanghai, 201306, China
d
Ningbo Research Institute, Zhejiang University, Ningbo, 315100, China
e
Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, National Engineering Research Center for Optical Instruments, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou,
310058, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Tunnel visible light communication (TVLC) technology with light emitting diode (LED) is a
Tunnel visible light communication research hotspot in advanced wireless communication systems. However, how to simultaneously
Light emitting diode improve the spectrum efficiency and suppress the nonlinear issues of the LED sources are still
Nonlinear
challenges. Here, we proposed and numerically study a novel companding technique for discrete
Peak-to-average power ratio
Discrete multitone modulation
multitone modulation (DMT) TVLC system. The proposed technique is upon the modified hy­
perbolic tangent transform function which can enlarge the small signals and compress the big
signals while keeping the average power invariant. The peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of
the system can be dramatically decreased, meanwhile the DMT signal can be kept working in the
linear region of the LED. Simulation results verify that the proposed companding technique is a
promising nonlinear suppressing method for high performance TVLC system. A 4.1Gbps TVLC
system is realized and the bit error ratio (BER) performance is improved to 5.74 × 10− 6 without
forward error correction (FEC).

1. Introduction

Recently, tunnel visible light communication (TVLC) technology with light emitting diode (LED) was born as a new branch of
wireless communication technologies. It is proposed to solve the harsh communication environment of the tunnel. Real-time
communication can be realized while maintaining tunnel lighting. The TVLC system is also not affected by natural light and other
stray light. It also possesses the advantages of fast transmission, high security and no electromagnetic interference [1].
Although the frequency of TVLC technology can reach 400 THz, the bandwidth of LED source is generally not more than 50 MHz. In
order to realize high-speed communication within such a narrow bandwidth, it is necessary to carry out high-order modulation which
gives high spectral efficiency [2–7]. Discrete multitone modulation (DMT) is an efficient solution. Compared with single carrier
modulation, DMT modulation has the advantage of high spectrum efficiency. It also induces the nonlinear issue of peak to average ratio
(PAPR) [5]. If DMT signal with high PAPR is used to drive the LED, the DMT signal will occupy a large dynamic range of the LED and
occasionally lead the LED work on the saturation region, which degrades the power utilization rate of the LED [3,6]. At the same time,

* Corresponding author at: School of Information Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, 250022, China.
E-mail address: ise_wangdong@ujn.edu.cn (D. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2020.166195
Received 2 November 2020; Accepted 17 December 2020
Available online 23 December 2020
0030-4026/© 2020 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
D. Wang et al. Optik 228 (2021) 166195

the inherent non-linear effect of the LED source will induce nonlinear noise to the spectrum of DMT signal and degrade the system
performance. Many techniques have been proposed to reduce the PAPR, such as clipping, coding, partial transmit sequence (PTS),
selective mapping (SLM) and companding [8–10]. Among all these schemes, clipping is the simplest scheme. But it will highly increase
the BER and induce inband insertion and outband radiation. Coding, PTS and SLM are proposed to reduce the PAPR without distortion.
But the amplitude of the DMT signals cannot be limited in the linear region of the LED. In the other hand, higher-speed electrical
processer will be needed. These schemes are not suitable for the VLC system.
Wang proposed the well-known scheme named μ-law companding technique based on speech processing in wireless communi­
cation system [9]. It showed better performance than that of clipping method, and its complicity was highly lower than PTS and SLM.
But, it just enlarged the small signals and kept the high signals. In this case, the signal average power was increased. Then Darryn have
proposed a hyperbolic tangent (HT) companding technique for wireless orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
communication in additive Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel [10,11]. In that scheme, the wireless OFDM signals were companded
while the amplitude of the signals were not limited into a specified region. In wireless communication channel, the PAPR only contact
to the phase of the subcarriers. The amplitude of the OFDM signal would not degrade the performance of the wireless system. The TVLC
system is highly distinguished from the conventional wireless systems. In one hand, high PAPR will occupy a large dynamic range of
the LED and occasionally lead the LED work on the saturation region in TVLC system. On the other hand, once the amplitude of the
driven signal of the LED exceed the linear voltage, the LED will also work on the saturation region. Then the produced optical signal
will be clipped. Thus, nonlinearity suppression solution that aiming to the unique characteristics of TVLC systems become a key point
in DMT modulation technology. In this paper, an improved HT companding technique is proposed to limit the high PAPR of DMT TVLC
systems.
This paper is organized as following. In Section II, block diagram for DMT TVLC system is established. The mathematic model of the
PAPR and the proposed companding technique in DMT system are described in section III. To evaluate the performance of the proposed
technique, simulations and discussion are carried out in section IV. The last section shows the conclusions.

2. Block diagram for DMT TVLC system

Fig. 1 shows the block diagram for a DMT TVLC system. Firstly, the 2.05Gbps pseudo-random data is modulated into mQAM/PSK
format. Then, IFFT processes those complex input with Hermitian mapping into real valued DMT signal. In order to decrease the
nonlinear effect of the LED frequency response, pre-equalizer is utilized to compensate the high frequency distortion of the signal.
Then, a modified HT companding scheme is proposed to reduce the PAPR of DMT signal, also limit the amplitude of the DMT signal
into the linear region of the LED. The signal is companded by the proposed compression technique and fed to a digital-to-analog
converter (DAC). Finally, the electrical DMT signal is amplified by an electronic amplifier and sent to drive the RGB-LED.
The RGB-LED consists of three chips radiating in the wavelength of 625 nm (red), 530 nm (green) and 455 nm (blue) respectively.
The red and green lights of RGB LED are used to carry valid information, while the blue light is only supplied with DC to maintain white
color illumination. Two DMT signals drive the red and green lights of the RGB-LED separately. The LED has a turn-on voltage. If the
bias voltage is smaller than the turn-on voltage, the LED is considered as cut-off. The bias voltage is set 2.4v.
The generated optical signal is then transmitted into the optical wireless channel.The frequency response is given by,
ω
H(ω) = exp(− ) (1)
ωb

where ωb is the matching coefficient. As we can observe, the frequency responses of blue and red chip of RGB LED are almost the same,

Fig. 1. Block diagram for DMT TVLC system.

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D. Wang et al. Optik 228 (2021) 166195

and the green chip and the phosphorescent white LED behave similarly. Here ωb is set 2π×21 × 106 and 2π×15.5 × 106 to simulate the
red light and green light optical wireless channel.
Before the PIN, lens are used to focus the light, and optical RGB filters are employed to filter out different colors. The signal will be
turned into electrical domain and demodulated into binary data through a PIN diode and a DMT receiver whose block diagram is the
inverse flow of the DMT transmitter, as shown in the bottom inset of Fig.1.

3. Improved hyperbolic tangent companding technique for PAPR reduction

At the transmitter part, after mQAM or mPSK modulation, Ck can be addressed as Ck=ak-jbk. Ck is constrained by the hamiltonian
mapping as,
CN− k = Ck∗ (2)

where k = 0,1…N/2− 1,and C0 = 0.

The real-valued output of IFFT can be obtained as,
N
2− 1
1 ∑ 2πkn 2πkn
Sn = √̅̅̅̅ (ak cos + bk sin ), n = 0, 2…N − 1 (3)
N k=1 N N

Then, the variance of the DMT signal can be drove as,

⎧ ⎫
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
〈 2〉 ⎨ 1 N∑ /
2− 1
2π kn 2π kn 2 ⎬ N − 2 1
2
σs = E sn = E (ak cos + bk sin ) = E(ak 2 + bk 2 ) (4)
⎪N k=1
⎪ N N ⎪ ⎪ 2N 2
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎩ ⎭

The PAPR of DMT signal is defined as the ratio of the peak power to the average power in each symbol [7],
( )
/ Sn 2
PAPR = Ppeak P = max ( 2 ) (5)
avg E Sn

In order to decrease the PAPR of DMT signal, the simplest method is to reduce the turning probability of the high instantaneous
amplitude. In this paper, companding technique built upon the improved HT function is carried out to reduce the magnitude of the
DMT signal peaks as following,

Fig. 2. Relationship between input and output using the proposed technique.

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D. Wang et al. Optik 228 (2021) 166195

f (x) = k1 tanh(k2 x) (6)

where x is the original DMT signal and f(x) represents the companded DMT signal. k1 and k2 are the companding parameters. Pa­
rameters k1 and k2 which are all positive, control the amplitude and the compressed nonlinearity respectively. The TVLC system is
highly distinguished from the conventional wireless systems. In one hand, high PAPR will occupy a large dynamic range of the LED and
occasionally lead the LED work on the saturation region in TVLC system. On the other hand, once the amplitude of the driven signal of
the LED exceed the linear voltage, the LED will also work on the saturation region. Then the produced optical signal will be clipped.
The proposed scheme can not only control the PAPR of the DMT signals, but also limit the amplitude of the DMT signals in the linear
region of the LED. Thus the clipping effect of the produced optical signal can be eliminated.
As illustrated in Fig.2, When k2 ≥2, the companding technique approaches the clipping scheme. When k2 ≤0.5, the companding
technique approaches linear transform. As is shown, small signals are enlarged while the big signals are suppressed, which can improve
the robustness against the noise. The PAPR are highly decreased.
In order to keep the signal power same as that before the compressing transform, k1 and k2 should satisfy the following condition,
[ ] [ ]
E |Sn |2 = E |k1 tanh(k2 Sn )|2 (7)

In this paper, after optimization with the adaptive Gauss-Kronrod quadrature, k1 = 0.9, k2 = 0.7071 are selected to compress the
original DMT signals.

4. Simulation results and discussions

Fig. 3 shows the original DMT signals and the signals compressed by the proposed HT technique. As is shown in Fig. 3, due to the
limitation of multicarrier modulation, many high peaks appeared in the DMT time signals. Then a high PAPR occurred. After com­
panding by the modified HT technique, small signals are enlarged and large signals are compressed. The PAPR is markedly decreased.
In order to evaluate the PAPR reduction performance of the proposed companding technique, complementary cumulative distri­
bution function (CCDF) with 512 subcarriers is simulated. As illustrated in Fig.4, compared to the CCDF curve of the original DMT
signals, the proposed technique highly reduced the PAPR. As the proposed HT scheme enlarged the small signal and compressed the big
signal, high PRPR reduction can be achieved by the proposed scheme.
Simulation of the optical wireless channel was conducted. A RGB LED lamp is installed on the ceiling of the tunnel. The 3D dis­
tribution of the receive red light signal power is shown in Fig.5. In this simulation, the luminous flux of the RGB LED is about 106 lm,
while the red chip occupy approximately 29 %. As is shown in Fig.5, with the deviation of the radiant angle, the received power
decreased.
Fig. 6 illustrates the BER performance with the improved HT companding technique and pre-equalization. Both the red chip and the
green chip are loaded with 2.05Gbps pseudo-random data. As is shown in Fig.5, with the increase of the transmission distance, the BER
performance gets deterioration. The BER performance of the green chip and red chip is almost same. Because of the luminous efficiency
and channel frequency response parameter difference between the green chip and the red chip, the BER performance of the green light
is a little better than the red one. When the transmission distance is 1.5 m, the BER can get to 5.74 × 10− 6. When the transmission
distance exceed 2 m, the constellation diagram and BER performance dramatically degraded. When the transmission distance is below
2 m, 4.1Gbps data transmission can be realized. In brief, the proposed HT companding technique can realize not only high PAPR
reduction but also good BER performance in the DMT TVLC system.
Fig.7 shown the BER performance of the red light versus the amplitude compression parameter k1, when the transmission distance
is fit to 1.7 m. With the increasing of the amplitude compresssion parameter k1, the BER performance gets deterioration. When k1 = 1,
it will realize the effect of Darryn’s scheme while we change the other parameter k2 in traditional wireless channel. The larger the
amplitude compression parameter, the lager the amplitude of the DMT signal. With the increasing of k1, the amplitude of the DMT

Fig. 3. Original DMT signal and compressed DMT signal.

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D. Wang et al. Optik 228 (2021) 166195

Fig. 4. CCDF versus PAPR.

Fig. 5. Distribution of the received power.

Fig. 6. BER versus transmission distance.

signal will occasionally exceed the linear voltage of the LED and make the LED work on the saturation region. On the other hand, the
amplitude compression parameter should not be too small. When k1is set to 0.5, the BER only get 5.74 × 10− 6. With the decrease of k1,
the proposed scheme achieve the effect of clipping.

5. Conclusions

Nonlinear companding transform is an effective technique to reduce the nonlinear in DMT TVLC transmission system. In this paper,
a novel companding technique which is based on the modified HT transform is presented. The proposed technique is upon the modified
hyperbolic tangent transform function which can enlarge the small signals and compress the big signals while keeping the average

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D. Wang et al. Optik 228 (2021) 166195

Fig. 7. BER versus amplitude compression parameter k1.

power invariant. At the same time, it can also make the DMT signal work in the linear region of the LED source. Numerical mathematic
simulation of PAPR and DMT TVLC system have been analyzed. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieved high PAPR
reduction and offered good BER performance. It is believed that the proposed companding scheme will play an important role in the
next generation TVLC system.

Declaration of Competing Interest

We declare that there is no conflict of interests.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO. 61905091) and the Phd foundation of University
of Jinan (NO. XBS1901).

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