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摘要:
本文立足于通信领域近年来备受关注的研究热点——可见光通信,阐述了其研究背景和基础系统架构,围绕材料器件、高速系统、异构网络、水下可见光通信和机器学习等五个前沿研究方向展开了对可见光通信研究进展的探讨,并概述了现阶段高速可见光通信技术面临的若干挑战。最后展望了可见光通信的前景:在未来万物互联的智能时代,可见光通信将以其高速传输的优势成为通信网络中不可缺少的一部分,与其它通信方式合作互补共同造福人类生活。
Abstract:Based on visible light communication technology which has been a research hotspot in the field of communication, this paper reviews the background of visible light communication, illustrates the basic system architecture and explores the research progress of visible light communication around five frontier directions: material chips, high-speed systems, multiplexing networks, underwater visible light communication and machine learning. The challenges faced by visible light communication are analyzed. Finally, looking forward to the prospect of visible light communication: in the intelligent era of future, visible light communication will become an indispensable part of communication networks with its advantages of high-speed transmission, and cooperate with other communication technologies to complement human life.
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Overview: Visible light communication (VLC) is a wireless optical transmission technology that utilizes visible light with a wavelength in the range of 380 nm to 790 nm. It can realize high-speed data transmission by using LED (light emitting diode) with fast response characteristics as a transmitter. VLC has offered several advantages such as license-free, cost-effective, immunity to electromagnetic interference and high security, comparing with traditional wireless communication. The biggest advantage of VLC is high speed. The existing VLC experiment can achieve a transmission rate of more than ten gigabits per second. This advantage makes VLC inevitable in the future intelligent era B5G/6G ultra-high speed ubiquitous optical networking. With such advantages, VLC has become an important scientific theme supported by governments since its inception. This paper explores the research progress of VLC around five frontier directions: material chips, high-speed systems, multiplexing networks, underwater visible light communication and applications of machine learning in VLC. Among them, material chips mainly include new light-emitting devices and light-receiving devices; high-speed systems introduce the development of VLC transmission rates; multiplexing networks are built around VLC access networks; underwater visible light communication and machine learning are the rapid and popular research directions in the field of VLC currently. High performance materials including light transmitters and receivers are indispensable for high-speed VLC. Many researchers have been concentrated on the fabrication of new LED materials. In order to further improve the transmission rate of VLC, researchers have done a lot of research from advanced modulation technology, signal pre-equalization and post-equalization, and made a series of breakthroughs. Studying how to connect VLC to an existing communication network and how to build a visible light wireless system composed of multiple visible light access points (VAPs), are the keys to the practical use of VLC. Under the intelligent era of the Internet of Everything, the underwater visible light communication is an indispensable component. Along with the constant exploration of researchers, underwater visible light communication achieves higher and higher transmission rates. However, due to the harsh underwater environment, there are few relevant theoretical models for the effects of suspended matter and particulate matter, the influence of underwater turbulence on the VLC channel. These disturbances increase the uncertainty of the performance of underwater visible light communication systems and require further research in the future. Some classical machine learning algorithms such as K-means, DBSCAN, deep learning, etc. have shown great potential and been tried by researchers to solve the problems in VLC. Looking forward to the prospect of VLC: in the intelligent era of future, VLC will become an indispensable part of communication networks with its advantages of high-speed transmission, and cooperate with other communication technologies to complement human life.
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表 1 不同光发射/探测器件比较
Table 1. Comparison of different light emitters/detectors
Light emitters/detectors Advantages Disadvantages LD High coherence; no efficiency drop; 3 dB bandwidth > 1 GHz Speckle effect; dangerous to human eyes SLD High efficiency; safe to human eyes; no speckle effect; 3 dB bandwidth 400 MHz~800 MHz No reliability assessment model; risk of coupling failure LED Low cost; long lifespan; safe to human eyes 3 dB bandwidth < 100 MHz PIN Low cost Low sensitivity; limited response bandwidth APD High sensitivity High cost; additional noise 表 2 三种调制方式优缺点
Table 2. Strengths and weaknesses of three different modulation methods
Modulation Strengths Weaknesses CAP Multi-dimensional high-order modulation and high spectral efficiency are achieved through efficient design of orthogonal basis function pulses LED frequency response has serious high-frequency fading, which would cause serious inter-symbol interference OFDM Effectively resisting the frequency fading of VLC channel, improving spectral efficiency The generated complex signals need to be converted into real numbers, which would increase system cost DMT Avoiding the transformation of complex signals into time domain, reducing the effect of frequency offset between the transmitters and receivers Losing half of the spectral efficiency 表 3 水下可见光通信部分研究成果
Table 3. Summary of recent UVLC achievements
Light emitters Modulation Data rate Distance BER Year Real time (Yes/No) 405 nm LD 64QAM-OFDM 1.45 Gbps 4.8 m 9.1×10-4 2015[42] No 450 nm LD NRZ-OOK 1.5 Gbps 20 m 3.0×10-3 2016[43] No 405 nm LD 16QAM-OFDM 10 Gbps 10 m »10-4 2017[44] No 680 nm LD 16QAM-OFDM 10 Gbps 6 m 2.9×10-4 2018[45] No 457 nm LED 128QAM-SGS 2.534 Gbps 1.2 m 3.7×10-3 2018[46] No 448 nm LED NRZ-OOK 25 Mbps 10 m 1×10-4 2018[47] Yes 457 nm LED 64QAM-DMT 3.075 Gbps 1.2 m 3.7×10-3 2019[48] No 450 nm LD NRZ-OOK 2.5 Gbps 60 m 3.5×10-3 2019[49] No 520 nm LD NRZ-OOK 500 Mbps 100 m 2.5×10-3 2019[50] No RGBYC LED Bit-loading-DMT 15.17 Gbps 1.2 m < 3.8×10-3 2019[8] No -
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