A Low PAPR Visible Light Communication System Employing SC-FDMA Technique

White light emitting diode (WLED) technology has been regarded as an environment-friendly lighting in the future. The WLED lighting system is able to provide short range wireless communication while illuminating rooms. The WLED based visible light communication (VLC) systems employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) technique has been investigated in many researches. However, the OFDMA technique has the inherent high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Such a VLC system with high peak power produces flickering light that can be detected by human eyes uncomfortably. In this paper, the application of single carrier frequency division multiplexing access (SC-FDMA) to VLC system is proposed and investigated. Because of the lower PAPR, the VLC system employing SC-FDMA technique outperforms comparable systems employing OFDMA, considered in terms of bit error rate performance under various practical considerations. Moreover, the proposed system also protects LED devices and human’s eyes from the over-bright due to peak signal power. Computer simulations corroborate the analysis results in the paper.