Generic BER analysis of VLC channels impaired by 3D user-mobility and imperfect CSI

Abstract

Visible light communications (VLC) has emerged as a high-speed, low-cost, and green supplement for the existing radio frequency (RF) based infrastructures. However, the performance of VLC based systems is found to degrade significantly due to detrimental outages caused by non-negligible variations in the VLC channel-gain, that are jointly induced by radial user-mobility and random photodetector-orientation (together designated as 3D mobility in this letter). In addition to the 3D user-mobility mentioned above, the performance of VLC based systems is further limited by imperfect channel-state information (CSI). Such degradations in the VLC-link caused by the aforementioned factors necessitate the quantification of performance-metrics for further benchmarking/receiver-design. In this work, an analytical expression for bit-error rate (BER) is derived for a single LED indoor VLC system considering the radial user-mobility, random receiver orientation, and imperfect CSI altogether. Further, the derived BER expressions are validated using computer-simulations using typical VLC channel models from the literature. A close agreement between the analytical and the simulated BER is observed, which verifies the accuracy of the presented analysis.