Enhanced Spatial Modulation of Indoor Visible Light Communication

In this study, we consider visible light communication in an indoor line-of-sight environment. It has been proved that among the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques, spatial modulation (SM) performs better than repetition coding (RC) and spatial multiplexing (SMP). On the basis of a combination of SM and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM), here, we propose an enhanced SM algorithm to improve the bit error rate. Traditional SM activates only one light-emitting diode (LED) at one time, and the proposed enhanced SM activates two LEDs at one time and reduces the intensity levels of PAM by half. Under the condition of a highly correlated channel, power imbalance is used to improve the algorithm performance. The comparison between the two schemes is implemented at the same signal-to-noise ratio. The simulation results illustrate that the enhanced SM outperforms the traditional SM in both highly correlated and lowly correlated channels. Furthermore, the proposed enhanced SM scheme can increase the transmission rate in most cases.