Abstract
Power line communications (PLC) and visible
light communications (VLC) are two emerging communication
technologies which have several similarities. Among
them, the advantage related to cost effectiveness is considered
as strong research motivation. These two technologies are
also characterized by the fact that each one of them barely
form a complete communication system without the need of
other supporting technologies. In this paper, based on the
positive aspect of VLC technology, we exploit the Hermitian
symmetry to design an hybrid system combining PLC
and VLC technologies using orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM). A DC biased optical OFDM (DCOOFDM),
employed in VLC, is investigated when combined
with PSK-OFDM (used in PLC). In the hybrid PLC-VLC
system proposed in this paper, we exploit the inherent clipping
feature of DCO-OFDM to combat impulsive noise found in
the PLC channel, where the optimal combination of the DC
bias level for optical communication, DC and impulse noise
clipping threshold, Tc are investigated through simulations.
We also exploit the fact that both DCO-OFDM and PSKOFDM
employ the FFT, to simplify the system.