Integrated Broadband Powerline and Visible Light Communication (VLC) using OFDM and Turbo Coding

This paper is focused on the communication scheme and its integration of Power Line Communication (PLC) and Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems. As the power line communication is becoming more popular in the last mile and home networking. In order to make the Power Line Communication (PLC) based networks more practical by having mobility at the last inch connectivity the VLC can be utilised. Some work has been done in the area of using power line for communications but these systems suffer from noise, inter symbol interference (ISI), and distortion. Most of the current proposed integrated systems are through Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and OFDM techniques, where they are considered as candidates for future broadband PLC networks. Our work is different in a sense that it is incorporating turbo codes in the integrated system to increase the system robustness to noise, ISI and distortion. The signal data to be transmitted will be connected through the Power Line modulator which is connected to the wall socket. The PLC modulator is then connected to the VLC modulator for the transmission of the signal in the air. At the receiver side however, the transmitted signal is then received through the VLC demodulator followed by the PLC demodulator. By introducing the turbo coder and decoder we were able to achieve a better performance for the integrated system to noise, ISI, and distortion. The performance of the system was measured through comparing the BER rate for the system with and without the turbo codes. The BER rate was also measured with respect to the signal to noise ratio, and data rate. Simulation results using Matlab was conducted to show the systems performance towards noise and other factors. A practical implementation for the PLC was assembled to better support the simulation results.