Reduction of inter-cell interference in asynchronous multi-cellular VLC by using OFDMA-based cell partitioning

Abstract

Inter-cell interference hinders multi-cellular transmission in visible light communication (VLC). We proposed a subcarrier allocation-based cell partitioning to avoid co-channel interference without a large frequency guard and additional RF components. In asynchronous environment, the interference remains due to a timing offset between cells even in the subcarrier allocation-based cell partitioning. To mitigate the remaining interference, we employed cyclic prefix (CP) extension and filter bank based multicarrier (FBMC), which could improve performance and it was experimentally demonstrated in this paper. By using the proposed method, inter-cell interference in asynchronous multi-cellular VLC could be effectively mitigated with only trivial frequency guard.