A block code is said to be linear block code if its codewords satisfy the condition that

sum of any two codewords gives another codeword i.e.

Now, in error control coding various techniques are used to detect and correct errors
that occur in the message transmission. The transmitting side of the error-control coding
adds redundant bits to the original information signal sequence. The receiving side of
the error-control coding uses these redundant bits to detect and correct the errors that
occurred during transmission.
Some trivial properties of linear block codes are as follows-
1. The all zero codewords i.e. [0,0,....0] is always a codeword.

2.
3. Minimum distance of the code should be equal to the minimum weight of the
given code.

Optical Wireless Communication(ref paper- Ahmed-Al-Kinani, Hemangi Joshi)

Wireless Communication in the optical portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that can
pass through the atmosphere all the way to ground is called optical wireless
communication. Optical Wireless Communication utilizes three different regions of the
electromagnetic spectrum i.e. infrared, visible light and ultraviolet. Shifting to higher
frequencies towards optical frequencies reduces the wavelength of the electromagnetic
waves. Henceforth, the propagation loss through a specific environment is typically very
high due to path loss which is inversely proportional to the 2nd power of
lambda(wavelength) and scattering which is inversely proportional to the 4th power of
lambda(considering the typical Rayleigh Scattering Model). This limits the range of
communication systems, but it makes Optical Wireless Communication attractive for a
variety of short-range wireless communication applications. Optical Wireless
Communication in general, utilizes the intensity modulation scheme because doing the
phase modulation of incoherent waves is a very challenging task as they do not
maintain a constant phase difference as the time progresses. On the other hand, direct
detection is considered as the most practical down-conversion technique. Due to the
reduced cost and complexity, this technique has been considered as the de-facto
modulation scheme for OWC. The development of wireless communication systems
operating in the region of infrared frequencies is driven by the demand of faster and
denser data-rate transmission within a personal mobile communication environment.
The characteristics and performance of the wireless optical channel are variables of the
type of the link namely, directed or undirected links and line of sight or diffused links. In
the indoor environment scenarios there is always a Non-line of sight transmission
because of high reflectivity of indoor objects such that a significant fraction of the
transmitted signal arrives at the receiver after undergoing through a number of
reflections. And due to this reflection losses a large amount of transmitted optical power
is required to provide a given signal coverage. To add up on that the received signal is
dispersed in time which causes reduced pulse amplitude, increased delay spread and
intersymbol interference. Depending upon the size of the indoor environment and the
reflection coefficients of the objects within, multipath propagation of the transmitted
signal puts a limitation on the maximum data-rate that can be transmitted. However, in
the outdoor optical wireless communication systems, the transceivers communicate
directly through the air via point-to-point LOS links. These links employ high-power
lasers operating in class 3B band or above for maximum coverage at high data-rates.
Due to the existence of a direct LOS path between the transmitter and the receiver, the
problems associated with multipath propagation are eliminated. As a result, very high
data-rates can be transmitted over a larger distance. But, in this case also the factors
affecting the performance of outdoor links are free space loss, clear air absorption,
scattering and noise induced due to atmospheric turbulence.

Visible Light Communication and the problems during transmission(ref paper-

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1512/1512.03568.pdf​ )

Visible Light Communication uses visible light between 400 and 800 THz of frequency
and this light signal can be detected by the human eye. It is nothing but a subset of
optical wireless communication. It is possible to achieve illumination and data transfer
simultaneously by means of LEDs that are the prominent lighting equipment lately. By
this way, both interior lighting of a room and data transfer will be achieved without the
need of an additional communication system. One of the main challenges to be carefully
considered during the design and modelling stages of an VLC system is the localization
status of the transmitter and receiver pair which mainly defines how the signal is
transmitted.

RS Codes(ref paper- Khalighi)

In the implementation of Free-Space Optics link, there are various practical challenges.
First, the stringent line-of-sight requires careful pointing and probably some tracking
mechanisms at the receiver. Another important problem is the susceptibility of the
optical link to weather conditions. In fact, aerosol scattering effects caused by rain,
snow, and fog, can reduce the link range due to the propagation loss in non-clear
atmosphere. Even in clear sky conditions, inhomogeneities in the temperature and
pressure of the atmosphere caused by solar heating and wind, lead to the variations of
the air refractive index along the transmission path. This leads to an increase in the link
error probability. Hence, in order to evaluate the performance improvement by time
diversity in weak, moderate, and strong turbulence regimes Reed-Solomon channel
coding method will be employed which is a form of linear block code. They belong to the
family of linear block codes and are usually used in data transmission systems
submitted to burst errors such as satellite communications. A typical type would be an
RS encoder taking k data symbols of t bits each at input, and providing n = (2^t) −1
output symbols, by adding n − k parity symbols to them. It is denoted by RS(n,k).

How VLC can be improved by RS codes?(ref paper- Qingqing Han)

One of the major challenges as already discussed faced by the in-door visible light
communication is the influence by shadow effect, other light sources, multipath effect
and intersymbol interference. The RS coding technology is the best way to improve the
performance of VLC systems. Although there are various other methods also by which it
can be improvised like adaptive filtering, FEC codes, Rees-Muller codes, however due
to their low transmission distances and low transmission rates they are generally not
preferred. Additionally, their processing is in offline mode and hence not preferred from
the computation perspective also. Therefore practically FPGA (field programmable gate
array) IP (Intellectual Property) core is applied to carry out the RS encoder and decoder,
which can greatly reduce system development difficulty and shorten the debugging
time. RS codes have the strong ability of correcting burst error and random error and
have been widely used in kinds of communication systems. The RS code which is
denoted by RS(n,k) has a very famous type of RS(255,239) code which can correct 8
error symbols. This is experimentally obtained with the VLC system which comprises
amplifiers,FPGA,Bias-tee,Dcpower,amplifier,FPGA,OSC,AWG. With the implementation
of this after the encoder, 239 data symbols followed 16 check symbols, and also is the
same as after decoder. Meanwhile, the symbols from encoder and decoder are the
same. This system thus can realize correct encoder and decoder. The 80Mbit/s signal
at 1m is obtained and observed on the oscilloscope using the RS code technology in
the VLC system. The hardware circuit modules can be used in all kinds of VLC systems
quickly and advantageously to improve the performance of communication. When
anti-interference and error correcting capabilities of RS(255,239) code is evaluated
using MATLAB(considering AWGN channel) it clearly demonstrated that when the
signal-to-noise ratio is above 5.4dB, the error bit rate of the system with RS codes is 0,
indicating it can correct the errors completely, but it is same as the system without RS
code when below 5.4 dB, even worse because the complexity of the link and also when
the error bit rate of the code stream is under 0.003, the error rate is 0, but it is same as
the general system when it is bigger than 0.003, this because the error symbols in the
code stream are beyond the RS code error correcting capability. Thus, after calculating
the performance of the VLC system using RS code and with the system without RS
code it clearly demonstrated that the performance can be improved by using RS code
technology.