Clipping noise-free transmission scheme in OFDM-based visible light communications

Clipping noise caused by light emitting diode (LED) non-linearity is a significant issue for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based visible light communication (VLC) systems. In this Letter, we propose what we believe to be a novel transmission scheme to mitigate clipping noise in OFDM-based VLC systems. The proposed scheme utilizes three time slots to transmit the signs of clipping noise, the clipped signals, and the absolute values of clipping noise, respectively. At the receiver, the signs of clipping noise from the first time slot are decoded first and used to reconstruct the clipping noise. Subsequently, the original transmission signals are reconstructed using the reconstructed clipping noise. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms existing multiple-slot transmission schemes in terms of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction and bit error rate (BER) performance.