Abstract—In visible light communication (VLC) systems, cellular networks are required for large indoor environment and built as a kind of new networks when combining the LED illumination, named communication and illumination networks (CIN). The co-channel interference (CCI) between adjacent cells leads to large areas of communication dead zones. Users covered by access points (APs) within illumination region are not necessarily covered within communication region and vice versa. In order to achieve seamless coverage, it is necessary to mitigate CCI and maximize the effective coverage of communication and illumination synchronously. In this paper, a coverage optimization model is built when APs share the same frequency resources. Genetic algorithm is used for optimizing LED arrangements, semi-angles at half-power and heights, and improving SINR and illuminance in CIN. The results show that the communication and illumination can be approximate seamless coverage after optimization and about 75% communication coverage improvement is achieved when illumination requirement is fulfilled. The solution has a better downlink throughput and complexity than state-of-the-art solutions when cellular coverage is approximate.

Index Terms—Visible light communication, communication and illumination network, co-channel interference, coverage optimization

Cite: Jian-Hui Liu, Qing Li, and Xiao-Yi Zhang, "Cellular Coverage Optimization for Indoor Visible Light Communication and Illumination Networks," Journal of Communications, vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 891-898, 2014. Doi: 10.12720/jcm.9.11.891-898