Multi-user techniques in visible light communications: A survey

Abstract

Visible light communication (VLC) is a recent proposed paradigm of optical wireless communication, in which the visible electromagnetic radiation is used for data transmission. The visible part of the spectrum occupies the frequency range from 400 THz to 800 THz, which is 10,000 times greater than the radio frequency (RF) band. Therefore, its exceptional characteristics render it a promising solution to support and complement traditional RF communication systems, and also overcome the currently witnessed scarcity of radio spectrum resources. To this end, in the last few years, there has been a rapid interest in multi-user processing techniques in VLC. Motivated by this, in this paper, we present a comprehensive and up-to-date survey on the integration of multiple-input multiple-output systems, multi-carrier modulations and multiple access techniques in the context of VLC.