Performance Analysis of DCO-OFDM in IEEE 802.11bb VLC PHY Modes: Impact of Biasing Techniques and Optical Channel Dispersion

This paper presents a performance analysis of Direct Current-biased Optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) under the IEEE 802.11bb standard for Visible Light Communication (VLC). The study covers all physical layer (PHY) modes (HT, VHT, and HE) through a complete simulation of the PHY processing chain, including scrambling, convolutional encoding, interleaving, and modulation. These results provide a standard-driven recipe to tune VLC transmitters while preserving IEEE 802.11bb interoperability. To the best of current knowledge, this is among the first IEEE 802.11bb-compliant evaluations of DCO-OFDM for VLC that jointly examine DC-biasing strategies and optical channel dispersion across HT/VHT/HE modes. The novelty lies in the presentation of practical and standard-oriented standard-based design guidelines for transmitter optimization under IEEE 802.11bb, rather than a new analytical model. This work provides one of the first IEEE 802.11bb-compliant evaluations of DCO-OFDM in VLC that jointly studies DC-biasing (static/dynamic/clipping) and optical dispersion (L=1/3/5) across HT/VHT/HE, reporting SNR@BER = 10−3 baselines, a mean BCD power proxy, and actionable bias–channel–mode design guidelines.