Performance Analysis and Optimization for Visible Light Communication with Spatial Modulation

Recently, visible light communication (VLC) technology has attracted great attention in both academia and industry. In this paper, a spatial modulation (SM) based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) VLC system with input-dependent noise is investigated. Based on the input-dependent noise, the theoretical symbol error rate (SER) expression is obtained. The SER performance of SM-based MIMO VLC system is analyzed for both input-dependent noise and input-independent noise cases. Considering the trade-off between SER and transmission rate, the successful transmission rate indicator is formulated, which is the product of SER and transmission rate. An optimization problem, whose goal is to maximize the successful transmission rate, is proposed to optimize the modulation order. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the obtained SER expression. Simulations also indicate that the system with larger input-dependent noise tends to have smaller modulation order in order to maximize the successful transmission rate.