ANALYSIS OF SPACE SHIFT KEYING MODULATION

APPLIED TO VISIBLE LIGHT COMMUNICATIONS

Yuxian Gong,Liwei Ding, Yingjie He, Hongbo Zhu, Yongjin Wang
Institute of Communication Technology, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Nanjing, Jiang-Su 210003, People’s Republic of China
E-mail: wangyj@njupt.edu.cn

Keywords: Space Shift Keying (SSK) Modulation, Visible line of sight (LOS) model or a diffuse model. In LOS channel,
Light Communications (VLC), MIMO. the light from transmitters is directed toward to the receiver,
while in diffuse channel the reflected light via objects (ceiling
Abstract or walls) also radiates to the receiver. Because of LOS’s
directionality, there is a sharp decline in performance under
Space Shift Keying (SSK) modulation combined with blockage or shadowing. Owing to the multipath propagations
Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) technique is an caused by reflections from ceilings and walls, the date rate is
entirely novel modulation concept that utilizes the spatial hindered in diffuse channel. Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output
domain for communication. In this scheme, several (MIMO) method with the ability to increase the link
transmitters are used for data transmission, but only one reliability and provide high data rates is an interesting
transmitter is active at any time instance, which can be scenario of VLC.
implemented by establishing a one-to-one mapping between Two famous MIMO techniques are the Bell Laboratories
the information to be transmitted and the index of the layered space-time (BLAST) architecture [3] and the
transmitters. In this paper, the performance of SSK applied to Alamouti scheme [4], but the system implementation is a real
Visible Light Communications (VLC) is studied, and the challenge on account of sophisticated detection or pre-coding
upper-bound bit-error-ratio (BER) is analyzed. The analytical algorithms. Space Shift Keying (SSK) modulation which can
results are validated via Monte Carlo simulations and an completely avoid inter-channel interference (ICI) in time and
optimal performance can be achieved through proper space is a new spectral efficiency enhancing solution to
selection of the element spacing of the single LEDs, the half reduce the high complexity of MIMO systems [5]. It is
power semi-angles and the position of the PDs. obtained by mapping a block of information bits to be
transmitted into the index of a single transmit–antenna which
1 Introduction is activated for data transmission while all the other antennas
radiate no power. This scheme allows SSK to require no time
The light emitting diodes (LEDs) are semiconductor devices synchronization among the transmitters and completely avoid
which can be switched fast with the addition of appropriate ICI at the receiver side. Consequently, this can reduce the
electronics. The light from modern solid-state LEDs therefore complexity of receiver design for optimal Maximum-
is a natural carrier for communication. Unlike radio frequency Likelihood (ML) decoding. Because of these characteristics,
(RF) transmission, Visible Light Communications (VLC) SSK can be proper modulation technique for low complexity
which is unregulated by Federal Communications MIMO implementations.
Commission (FCC) is license-free and has no interference In this paper, we apply SSK to VLC in indoor propagation
caused to RF based systems, so it has great potential to scenarios. The performance of SSK is studied and the upper
provide flexible and efficient data transmission [1]. Generally, bound BER is analyzed. Additionally, the theoretical results
VLC system using LEDs can be simply obtained by are verified by the Monte Carlo method. The rest of this paper
employing intensity modulation (IM) and direct detection is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the SSK model
(DD) which are often used in IR (Infrared) communication, in VLC. Performance analysis and simulation results are
because IM/DD is a practical scheme that can achieve presented in Section 3. Finally, Section 4 concludes the paper.
uncomplicated and inexpensive optical modulation and
demodulation [2]. A VLC channel can be categorized as a

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 x(t ) y (t )

s (t )
x (t ) s(t)
H

Figure 1. The SSK visible light communications system model

the gain of the optical filter, g (\ ji ) is the gain of the optical

2 Space shift keying (SSK) system model concentrator, \ c denotes the width of the field of the vision
The system model of SSK is shown in Figure. 1, which (FOV) at the receiver.
consists of a MIMO optical wireless link with four ( Nt =4) The detection at the receiver which applies the optimal spatial
modulation detector is based on the Maximum-Likelihood
transmitters and four ( N r =4) receive antennas. By using SSK (ML) principle [9]. The detector decides the active transmit
modulation, a sequence of random bits to be transmitted s (t ) unit index i as follows,
enters the SSK mapper. Each two bits ( log 2 ( Nt ) ) are mapped i arg m ax py ( y | x, H )
to one of the transmitting (LEDs) indexes, and the encoder
i
(4)
mapping table is depicted in the figure. In SSK modulation, arg m i n U || hi xi ||2F 2( yT hi xi )
i
only one transmitter which transmits a certain optical power
where i is the estimated transmitter LED index. hi is
is activated at any given time instance and all the other
antennas radiate no power. This avoids inter-channel i th column of the channel matrix H, the column changes
interference (ICI) at the receiver side and reduces the depending on the activated LED. x is the signal vector to be
complexity of the detection. The certain optical power carries transmitted from the matrix x(t) at this time instance. The
no information, which can be utilized to optimize SNR and notation || . ||F stands for the Frobenius norm of a
power consumption [6].
At the receiver, four PDs (photo detector) are used to detect vector/matrix, (.)T for transpose. p y ( y | x, H ) is the
the optical power x(t ) which is the signal vector to be probability density function (pdf) of y conditioned on the
transmitted over the MIMO channel H. The channel can be signal vector x and the channel matrix H as defined in [9].
modelled as a time-invariant system with additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN) n(t ) [7]. The four-dimensional 3 Performance analysis and simulation results
received signal vector is given as follows:
The upper bound BER performance of SSK is derived in
y (t ) U H (t ) … x(t )  n(t ) (1) [9,10] and for the VLC system, it is given with slight changes
where … denotes time convolution, U is the average signal to in [6] as follows,
Nt Nt
N(k, v)
noise ratio (SNR) at each receive antenna, H (t ) is BER  BERUB =¦ ¦ PEP(k o v) (5)
the N r u Nt channel matrix. Its single element h ji (t ) represents k 1 vzk 1 Nt
the channel impulse response of the optical wireless link where N (k , v) is the number of bits in error between transmit
between transmitter i and receiver j with pass
f unit index k and v. The pairwise error probability,
loss h ji ³f h ji (t )dt . Here, we assume that LOS paths and
PEP(kĺv),can be computed as follows[10].
h ji can be represented as [7,8],
§ U · (6)
­(m1)A m PEP(k o v | hk , hv ) Q ¨¨ || hk  hv ||2F ¸¸
° cos (Iji )Ts (\ ji )g(\ ji )cos(\ ji ),0 d\ ji d\c (2) 4
hji ® 2Sdji
2 © ¹
° 0 ,\ ji t\c where Q( x) ( 1 f
) ³ exp(t / 2)dt is the Q-function.
2
¯ 2S x
where m is the order of Lambertian emission which is related
to the semi-angle at half power I1/ 2 by the equation:
m  ln2/ ln(cosI1/2 ) (3)
A is the physical area of the detector in the PD, d ji is the
distance , I ji is the irradiance angle and \ ji is the incidence
angle between the i th transmitter and j th receiver, Ts (\ ji ) is

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dled,30.5
dled,3); (30.5
dled,30.5
dled,3);
dled,30.5
dled,3); (30.5
dled,30.5
dled,3),
Figure 2. 4x4 VLC MIMO model in a room.
In the following, we present selected performance results to
analyze the average BERs and the simulation results are also
given via Monte Carlo simulations. In our analysis, we use a
VLC system model as depicted in Figure.2 to derive the
channel gains of indoor setup scenarios. Four LEDs are
installed on the ceiling and four PDs locate at the desk height
0.75m from the floor. Both LEDs and PDs are aligned in
rectangular arrays, the physical area of the PD is 1cm嘒, the
PDs FOV is 90 e , they are assumed to have complete
knowledge of the channel and Ts (\ ji ) = g (\ ji ) = 1.
from 0 dB to 30 dB, the coordinate positions of PDs are (2.9,
2.9, 0.75); (2.9, 3.1, 0.75); (3.1, 2.9, 0.75); (3.1, 3.1, 0.75),
and the positions of LEDs are
(30.5
(7)
(30.5
d led is the element spacing of the single LEDs and it is
assumed to be 0.2m, 1.2m, 2.2m. We can see the simulation
BER performance of SSK and the analytical average BER are
a tight matching. It is noticed that the performance can be
enhanced by increasing the element spacing of the single
LEDs in our indoor setup scenarios, because the SSK
performance increases as the correlation between the channel
paths degrades. While all other parameters are the same, the
correlation degrades with the element spacing of the single
LEDs increasing. In order to understand this behaviour, we
give a comparison among various element spacings in Fig.4.
The simulation parameters we used here are the same as those
in Fig3. For large values of the element spacing of LEDs, the
correlation between the channel paths degrades and this
makes the active LEDs more distinguishable at the receiver
side, so the performance is enhanced. Two other parameters
that can affect the correlation between the channel paths are
the position of the PDs and the half power semi-angles.
-4
x 10
6
h(Channel Gain)

0
10
4

-1 2
10

0
6
-2
10 4 6
y(m) 4
2 x(m)
2
0 0
-3
BER

10
(a)
dled=0.2m simulation
-4
x 10
-4 dled=0.2m analytical
10
4
dled=1.2m simulation
h(Channel Gain)

dled=1.2m analytical 3
-5
10
dled=2.2m simulation 2

dled=2.2m analytical 1
-6
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0
SNR(dB) 6
4 6
y(m) 4
Figure 3. BER performance analysis of SSK versus SNR by 2 2 x(m)
varying the element spacing of the single LEDs 0 0

In Figure3, the upper-bound BER is calculated as in (5) and (b)

obtained via Monte Carlo simulations. Here, the half power
semi-angles ( I1/ 2 ) are assumed to be 20°, the SNR is varied

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 -4
x 10 In Figure.6, the half power semi-angles we choose in our
simulation are 20°, 30° and 40°. The BER performance
1.5
degrades as the half power semi-angles increase; this is also
due to the fact that the channel paths correlation will increase
h(Channel Gain)

1 when the half power semi-angle increases.

0
0.5 10

0
6 -1
6 10
4
y(m) 2 4
2 x(m)
0 0
-2
10
(c)
Figure 4. Simulated channel gain with specific element
spacing of the single LEDs. The element spacing of the -3

BER
10
single LEDs (dled) is (a) 0.2m, (b) 1.2m and (c) 2.2m

Figure.5 depicts the BER performance versus SNR for -4

ij1/2=20° simulation
different positions of the PDs and Figure.6 for different half 10 ij1/2=20° analytical
power semi-angles. We assume that the parameters are ij1/2=30° simulation
similar to those which we use to analyze in Figure.3
ij1/2=30° analytical
except d led =1.2m. In Figure.5, the positions of PDs we
-5
10
ij1/2=40° simulation
choose in our simulation are (3, 0.2, 0.75); (3, 1.2, 0.75); (3,
ij1/2=40° analytical
2.2, 0.75). The larger the distance between LEDs and PDs is,
-6
the stronger the correlation between the channel paths can be 10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
and the performance becomes bad, because the LEDs can be
SNR(dB)
considered as point source in the space when the distance is
very large. Figure 6. BER performance versus SNR for different half
power semi-angles
0
10
The results show that the element spacing of the single LEDs,
the half power semi-angles and the position of the PDs can
10
-1 affect the SSK performance. We can properly select these
parameters to obtain an optimal performance.

-2
10

4 Conclusions
-3
BER

10 In this paper, we have studied the performance of SSK

applied to Visible Light Communications in indoor
environment. The results were substantiated via Monte Carlo
10
-4 simulations. We have demonstrated that SSK provides a
(3,0.2,0.75) simulation better BER performance in low channel paths correlation
(3,0.2,0.75) analytical which is affected by the element spacing of the single LEDs,
-5
(3,1.2,0.75) simulation the half power semi-angles and the position of the PDs.
10 (3,1.2,0.75) analytical Properly select these parameters can obtain an optimal
(3,2.2,0.75) simulation performance.
(3,2.2,0.75) analytical
-6
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Acknowledgements
SNR(dB) This Work is jointly supported by National Natural Scien-
ce Foundation of COUNTRY (No.11104147), Jiangsu 973
project(BK2011027) and research project (NY211001,
Figure 5. BER performance analysis of SSK versus SNR for BJ211026).
different center coordinates of the PDs position

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