SCHOOL of ENGINEERING

M-Level Project Synopsis

This project is the final 60 credit element of taught MScs in the School of Engineering. This
project must allow students to demonstrate: independent research, awareness of business
influences, project planning, practical application of theory, critical thought and analysis, the
ability to make concise and valuable recommendations and professional presentation skills.

The structure of the project is similar to that of the 3 rd Year Undergraduate Individual Projects,
however, there are some important differences.
 This is a 60-credit module and should therefore represent a minimum of 600 hours of
student learning, per student.
 Ideally the student should be treated as a temporary member of your research team and
return the reciprocal value to you.
 The students are at Masters’ level and should therefore demonstrate the appropriate level
of professionalism and insight. They are subject to Postgraduate regulations and the
postgraduate marking scheme.

Please see the Operational Handbook for further details, including a comprehensive list of the
module outcomes.
1 Project Title: OFDM in Intensity Modulation and Direct Detection of Visible Light
Communications

Academic Supervisor
Yuli Yang

2 Proposed Second Marker(s)

3 Necessary Stream / Options / Clearance

familiarity with MATLAB, or Arduino, or ARM mbed
knowledge of communication systems
solid knowledge of Fourier transform

4 Industry Collaboration

5 Synopsis (max 1 pages/500 words – students will read this)

5.1 Introduction

Visible light communications (VLC) have been developed very fast and currently they are being
considered into practical solutions. In traditional wireless communications using radio
frequency (RF), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is one of the key techniques
to increase the throughput and enable multiple access. The application of OFDM into VLC has
also been developed. However, the intensity modulation and direct detection in VLC require
real and positive valued signals to be processed, which limits the OFDM transplanted from the
RF systems to VLC systems since OFDM in RF systems generates complex valued signals.

The modification of traditional OFDM has been made to satisfy the unipolar requirement in
VLC. The main principle is to force the OFDM frequency tones to obey the Hermitian symmetry,
which will guarantee pure real valued time domain symbols generated after the inverse fast
Fourier transform (IFFT) [1]. To implement the Hermitian symmetry, the first half of the
frequency tones have to be the conjugate of the rest. There are two main methods: (i) direct
current based optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) [2], where a high direct current is added to the real-
valued signals (generated by Hermitian symmetry) to make most of negative parts become
positive and, then, those remaining negative values are set to zero, (ii) asymmetrically clipped
optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) [3], where every other subcarrier is left blank to make the overall
frequency tones still satisfy Hermitian symmetry and, then, the IFFT makes all the negative
samples have their positive counterparts of the same magnitudes; hence the negative samples
can be discarded and the original signal can be recovered without information loss at the
receiver.
Both methods have their disadvantages: DCO-OFDM is energy-inefficient due to typically 7 dB
or higher DC shift, while the ACO-OFDM is spectrally inefficient because the processing of its
frequency tones leaves three quarters of the subcarriers with either zero or redundant
conjugate symbols. In general, DCO-OFDM is more spectral-efficient than ACO-OFDM, while
ACO-OFDM is more energy-efficient than DCO-OFDM.

To improve the spectral efficiency of the ACO-OFDM, layered ACO-OFDM (LACO-OFDM) is

proposed [4], where additional ACO-OFDM layers are embedded within the classic ACO-OFDM
frame to occupy the blank even-indexed ACO-OFDM subcarriers. However, this is achieved at
the cost of interlayer interference.

In this project, the student will get familiar with DCO-OFDM, ACO-OFDM, and LACO-OFDM and
use MATLAB codes to illustrate their performance, specifically for the bit error rate (BER). The
students are required to be able to analyse the factors that affect the system performance and
based on these three schemes, the student is desired to develop a new scheme achieving
better energy efficiency and spectral efficiency than them.

5.2 Research Questions

MATLAB simulations to illustrate

1) BER performance of DCO-OFDM
2) BER performance of ACO-OFDM
3) BER performance of LACO-OFDM
4) Attempt to develop a new scheme achieving better energy efficiency and spectral
efficiency than these three schemes

5.3 Suggested reading to start off the project

[1] J. Armstrong, “OFDM for optical communications,” Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 27,
no. 3, pp. 189-204, Feb. 1, 2009.
[2] J. B. Carruthers and J. M. Kahn, “Multiple-subcarrier modulation for nondirected wireless
infrared communication,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 14, no. 3, pp.
538-546, Apr. 1996.
[3] J. Armstrong and A. J. Lowery, “Power efficient optical OFDM,” Electronics Letters, vol. 42,
no. 6, pp. 370-372, Mar. 2006.
[4] Q. Wang, C. Qian, X. Guo, Z. Wang, D. G. Cunningham, and I. H. White, “Layered ACO-OFDM
for intensity-modulated direct detection optical wireless transmission,” Optics Express, vol. 23,
no. 9, pp. 12382-12393, May 2015.
5.4 Methodology

Theoretical analysis and MATLAB simulations

5.5 Expected results

Basically, a report on the theoretical analysis and MATLAB simulations is required.

If a new scheme is developed, an academic paper for IEEE transactions or letters will be
expected.

5.6 Research outcomes

Theoretical analysis results and MATLAB simulation results on the three classical optical OFDM
schemes.
A new scheme that outperforms these schemes is expected.

6 Project Requirements

6.1 Research Data Sources

Reference papers
MATLAB

6.2 Metrics to be used

BER
Energy efficiency
Spectral efficiency

6.3 Types of experiments or design

MATLAB codes for the DCO-OFDM, ACO-OFDM, and LACO-OFDM systems to measure their BER
performance as well as energy efficiency and spectral efficiency

Attempt to develop a new scheme and use MATLAB codes to illustrate its performance

6.4 Other resources/equipment/software not in the school

6.5 Cost implications

7 Risk Analysis
Please complete the following table (probability: Low, Medium, High;
Impact: Low, Medium, High)

Risk Probability Impact Mitigations

Unable to fully understand
the three existing To get solid knowledge of OFDM
Low High
schemes, i.e., DCO-OFDM, and communication systems
ACO-OFDM, LACO-OFDM
Unable to use MATLAB
Low High To get familiar with MATLAB
very well
This is a desired target and might
be skipped.
Unable to develop a new The main objective of this project
scheme that outperforms High Low is to let the student to get familiar
existing scheme(s) with the existing schemes and
implement them with MATLAB
codes.