Performance Analysis of Visible Light Communications-Based Hotspots in Indoor and Outdoor Environments

In this work, we study the performance of optical-based wireless hotspots in indoor and outdoor environments. The performance of optical-based wireless networks depends on many factors such as in point-to-point link alignment between transmitter and receiver, field of view of the receiver, semi-angle at half power of light emitting diode transmitter, background noise such as ambient and thermal noise, velocity of the user and so on. In this paper, we use the throughput-distance relationship model which has been derived analytically by taking into account above mentioned factors for evaluating the performance of VLC hotspot networks in indoor and outdoor environments at both, day and night conditions. Simulations are also performed to evaluate the performance of such hotspot network in the context of data download on move scenario. Simulation results reveal that there is a large impact of background noise on the performance of VLC hotspots. As expected, in both indoor and outdoor environments VLC hotspot performs better at night than at day time. Performance of VLC hotspot networks is also quantified in terms of received file size at different bit error rate requirements and velocities of mobile user. For example, in a typical indoor environment at night time a mobile user at velocity 1 m/s can download four megabyte file while passing through a VLC hotspot with a BER requirement of \(10^{(-3)}\).