Wireless optical PPM telemetry and the influence of lighting flicker

Digital pulse-position modulation (PPM) is attractive to apply in wireless optical-telemetry systems because of its power efficiency. Usually, the bit-error rate is assumed to depend solely on the noise level. The detrimental influence of optical interference is overlooked. In this paper, interference measurements are reported, models that describe interference are presented, and it is shown that the influence of interference can be significant. Further, new rules for system design in the presence of interference are reported. It appears that, compared with the influence of noise, the flicker of incandescent lamps is usually negligible, but the flicker of fluorescent lamps is not negligible.