Noise Mitigation Methods for Digital Visible Light Communication

Abstract

Visible Light Communication (VLC) using Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) has gained attention due to its low power consumption, long lifetime, and fast response. However, VLC suffers from optical noise generated by ambient light sources such as fluorescent lamps, which leads to waveform distortion and increased bit error rates (BER). In this paper, we propose two noise reduction methods for Digital Visible Light Communication (DVLC) systems. The first method exploits the periodic nature of interference caused by AC-powered-line illumination and reduces interference by subtracting sampled noise waveforms from the received signal. Second, inspired by Active Noise Control (ANC) techniques, an additional photodiode is introduced for noise reception, and subtraction circuits are employed to attenuate noise in real time. Experimental results show that both methods improve BER performance compared with conventional receivers, with the ANC-inspired approach achieving superior performance under all tested conditions.