J. Opt. Commun.

2020; aop

Ridha Touhami*, Djamal Slimani, Ayad Atiyah Abdulkafi, Yaseein Soubhi Hussein
and Mohamad Yusoff Alias

Combined Envelope Scaling with Modified SLM

Method for PAPR Reduction in OFDM-Based VLC
Systems
https://doi.org/10.1515/joc-2019-0273 DD) is used to modulate the signal, this signal cannot be
Received November 02, 2019; accepted January 20, 2020 negative, positive and real signals bounded in the
dynamic range of the LEDs are requisites in IM-DD-based
Abstract: Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
VLC systems [3–5]. VLC offers many advantages over RF
technique (OFDM) has been adopted widely as a modu-
transmission; it provides a huge communication unli-
lation technique for radio frequency (RF) and optical
censed bandwidth which approximately ranges from 380
communication systems such as visible-light communica-
to 780 nm, VLC does not generate radiation, which causes
tion (VLC) due to its high spectral efficiency and low-
concern about health, no co-channel interference between
complexity implementation. VLC-OFDM is recommended
VLC systems in adjacent rooms [6, 7]. VLC systems can be
in 5 G mobile communication. However, VLC-OFDM suffer
used in many areas such as the hospital, the airplane and
from the high peak to-average power ratio (PAPR). In this
the spaceship due to its slightly influence on electronic
paper, a modified selective mapping (MSLM) method is
devices [8]. VLC channel exposes frequency-selectivity due
applied to the proposed system followed by a new enve-
to the characteristics of LEDs, the solution to attain better
lope scaling process for further reductions in PAPR of
performance with a frequency-selective channel is apply-
VLC-OFDM system. Simulation results show that the pro-
ing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
posed method reduces the PAPR by about 6.8 and 1.7 dB
technology [9]. OFDM has been used in VLC systems
comparing with the original signal and the traditional
with some modifications to adapt the intensity modulation
SLM with a number of rotation vector U = 8, respectively.
direct detection (IM/DD) channel [10]. For VLC-OFDM a
number of schemes have been proposed, direct-current-
Keywords: OFDM, VLC, PAPR, scaling, SLM
biased OFDM (DCO-OFDM), asymmetrically clipped optical
OFDM (ACO-OFDM) [11], unipolar OFDM (U-OFDM),
enhanced unipolar OFDM (eU-OFDM), spectral and energy
1 Introduction efficient OFDM (SEE-OFDM) and polar OFDM (P-OFDM)
[12]. Similar to OFDM radio frequency (RF) communication
Visible-light communication (VLC) is a communication
systems, the high peak to average power ratio (PAPR)
technique for indoor and downlink wireless networking
disadvantage also become a major problem in VLC-
system, it use the visible light spectrum to supply illumi-
OFDM system due to the additional nonlinearity of LED
nation and information transmission simultaneously by
[13, 14]. A number of methods was proposed to reduce the
the means of light emitting diodes (LEDs) [1, 2]. In VLC
PAPR VLC-OFDM system as an example DFT-Spread
systems, intensity modulation with direct detection (IM/
Combined with PTS Method [14], a pilot symbol (PS) [15]
*Corresponding author: Ridha Touhami, Electronic, University of or linearizing the LED response [16]. In [17] it demonstrated
Ferhat Abbas Setif 1, Setif 19000, Algeria, that the PAPR of the VLC-OFDM system can be reduced by
E-mail: ridha_pg2007@yahoo.fr using the signal linear scaling (LS) combined with biasing
Djamal Slimani, Electronic, University of Ferhat Abbas Setif 1, Setif operation. In this paper we propose an expression scaling
19000, Algeria, E-mail: slimani.djamel@ymail.com
factor combined with SLM technique to reduce the PAPR
Ayad Atiyah Abdulkafi, Electrical Engineering, Tikrit University,
Salahadin, Tikrit 43001, Iraq, E-mail: al.ayad@yahoo.com
in VLC-OFDM system. This paper is organized as follows:
Yaseein Soubhi Hussein, Department of Information Technology & Section 2 describes the VLC-OFDM system. Section 3
Computer Science, Ahmed Bin Mohammed Military College, Qatar, explains The problem of PAPR, SLM and proposed PAPR
Doha, Qatar, E-mail: dr.yaseein@abmmc.edu.qa reduction methods are presented. The simulation results
Mohamad Yusoff Alias, Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia are presented in Section 4. Finally, the conclusions are
University, Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia,
given in Section 5.
E-mail: yusoff@mmu.edu.my
2 R. Touhami et al.: Combined Envelope Scaling
2 OFDM-VLC System
OFDM is one of the modern multicarrier modulation tech-
nique in telecommunication systems, it has been applied
widely in many wireless communication. The principle of
OFDM is transmitting the data by dividing the stream into
parallel bit streams, each one of these data streams will
be modulated onto subcarriers. OFDM is robustness ver-
sus multi-path fading, lSI (Inter Symbol Interference) and
frequency selective channel, and has high spectral effi-
ciency [18]. Due to the latest advantages, OFDM is also
used in optical communications including free space
optics and VLC. In the optical wireless system using
LEDs, the most effective modulation is intensity modula-
tion (IM) in which the communication signal is modu-
lated onto the instantaneous power of the optical carrier.
The most practical down conversion technique is direct
detection (DD) so a proportional current to the received
instantaneous power will be generated with optical detec-
tor. In the DD demodulation scheme, only the intensity of
the optical wave is detected. Therefore, indoor optical
applications use IM/DD as a practical transmission to
realize simple and low-cost optical modulation and
demodulation [19–21].
A basic model of indoor DCO-OFDM systems is illus-
trated in Figure 1. In OFDM system, the serial stream of
data demultiplexed into parallel streams, each one is
transmitted on a separate sub-carrier, multi-level quad-
rature amplitude (M-QAM) modulation schemes are con-
sidered, each stream is transmitted on a independent
subcarrier. The VLC-OFDM model is identical to the clas-
sical OFDM system but with some modifications. The
OFDM baseband signal is used to modulate the LED
Figure 1: Block diagram of the VLC-OFDM system.
intensity, so, any complex values should be avoided. A
real value OFDM baseband signal can be generated by
constraining the input to the IFFT operation to have
Hermitian symmetry. Half the available subcarriers are
used to carry the complex conjugate of the data symbols
[4, 19] as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Sample IFFT input frame (transposed).
where ½
* is the complex conjugate operation. In addition,
X0 and XN2 are set to zero. The IFFT operation modulates
the sub-carriers and generates the time domain OFDM
signal,
 
1 XN − 1 2πnk
xk = n=0 n
X exp j (1)
N N
where xk with k = 0, · · ·, N − 1, are the N time-domain
output samples, and Xn with n = 0, ·· ·, N − 1, are the
input symbols [19].
After generating the OFDM symbol xk , it is then
converted from parallel to serial, a cyclic prefix (CP) is
added to avoid multipath induced ISI, and the resulting
signal is digital to analog converted (DAC) to obtain a
bipolar real-valued OFDM signal xðtÞ in the time
domain. In a DCO-OFDM system, the positive forward
signal yðtÞ that drives the LED must be obtained from
xðtÞ after application a linear scaling (LS) and a biasing
operation.

yðtÞ = αxðtÞ + BDC (2)
where the real value BDC is the biasing level added to xðtÞ
to ensure a unipolar OFDM signal at the LED input, and
real value α is the scaling factor to scale xðtÞ within the
dynamic range of LED [3, 4, 17].
After the scaling and biasing operation, the resulting
signal y(t) will have a mean value BDC and a variance
σ2y = α2
σ2x , where σ2x is the variance of xðtÞ.
In VLC systems, LEDs are used to transmit information
and illuminate at the same time, and they are the principal
source of nonlinearities in addition the VLC system is
limited by the dynamic range of the LED [3, 22]. In [3],
the authors assume that the characteristic input-output of
the LED is linearized in limited interval [VTOV , VSAT ] as
shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Linear LED input-output characteristic [3].
where VTOV is the turn-on voltage, and VSAT denotes the
saturation input voltage.
OSAT denotes the output optical power at VSAT and
OAVG is the average optical power.
The dynamic range of the LED is defined as
DR = VSAT − VTOV (3)
At the receiver, the inverse operations are executed, the
OFDM symbols are captured when optical signals are
detected and converted by the photoelectric detector
and ADC conversion, respectively, the cyclic prefix and
DC-biased are removed. Then, the FFT operator is per-
formed, the FFT operation reproduces the mirrored frame
structure designed in the transmitter. The upper half
(elements 2 to M + 1) of this frame is retained as the
valid result. The complex data is then passed through
the QAM demodulator to recover the binary data [11, 23].
R. Touhami et al.: Combined Envelope Scaling 3
3 Peak-to-average power ratio
OFDM has a major disadvantage of high PAPR, it can
affect the performance of communication system which
is defined as the ratio of the maximum instantaneous
power to the average power [20, 24], which is given by:
maxjxk j2
PAPR = (4)
E jxk 2 j
where maxjxk j2 is maximum value of the OFDM signal
power, Ej.jdenotes the statistical expectation.
In VLC-OFDM system, the linear dynamic range of
the light emitting diode is very limited, which is similar to
the radio frequency OFDM (RF-OFDM) communication
system, the high PAPR problem also become a prominent
drawback of visible light OFDM system. PAPR can be
considered as a random variable, and is best character-
ized by the complementary cumulative distribution func-
tion (CCDF) [24]. The CCDF of the PAPR is defined as the
probability that the PAPR of an OFDM frame exceeds a
given reference value PAPR0 and it is the most frequently
used measure for describing PAPR reduction.
CCDF = P ðPAPR > PAPR0 Þ = 1 − P ðPAPR ≤ PAPR0 Þ = 1 − CDF
(5)
In this paper, we consider the SLM method in reduction
of PAPR.
3.1 SLM technique
SLM is an attractive and commonly employed technique
for reducing PAPR in OFDM systems due to its simplicity
in structure [25–27], in this method we choose efficient
phase rotation factors the PAPR to improve the perform-
ance of SLM OFDM. The block diagram of SLM scheme is
depicted in Figure 4.
The principle of SLM is as follows [28, 29]:
Firstly, the data input signal X sequence of length N
is serial to parallel converted. The obtained data stream is
given by vector X = ½X0, X1, X2 . . . XN − 1T
Then it is multiplied with U randomly generated
phase rotation sequence P of the length N, P ðU Þ .
h i
ðuÞ ðu Þ
P ðuÞ = P0








PN − 1 (6)
4 R. Touhami et al.: Combined Envelope Scaling
Figure 4: Block diagram of SLM scheme.
ðU Þ ðuÞ
ðuÞ
Pk = ej’k , ’k 2 ½0, 2π ,
0 ≤ k < N, 0 ≤ u ≤ U
This multiplication resulting in a set of U different possi-
ble transmit symbols
X ðU Þ = XP ðUÞ
After this, the U possible transmit vectors are converted
to the time domain via the IFFT
 
xðU Þ = IFFT X ðU Þ
Finally, the transmit symbol with the lowest PAPR is
chosen for transmission. The elements of the phase vec-
tors are restricted from the set { ± 1, ± j} to simplify com-
plex multiplications [25, 28].
3.2 Proposed method
In order to solve the problem of PAPR or to reduce it in
VLC-OFDM system, firstly we apply SLM method, which
is used widely in RF-OFDM system. Secondly, we com-
bined the SLM method with our proposed expression for
the scaling factor α shown as follows:
minðDR, BDC Þ
αp = (10)
maxðDR, BDC Þ
the idea was proposed after some tests on the value of α.
Some values are applied to α shows us that there is a
proportional variation between the PAPR and these
values, so when the value of α decreases the PAPR is
decreased.
This proposed scaling factor αp depend directly on
the diode characteristics ðDR, BDC Þ which are explained in
Section 2 and scale automatically the signal x(t) without a
fixed value for α and allows to reduce the PAPR .
4 Simulation results
The OFDM suffer from high PAPR which flow from the
superposition of a large number of usually sub-channels.
Hence, careful regulation of the OFDM signal envelope is
necessary to control distortion levels. In addition, the
(7)
LED must be biased to avoid maximum distortion, while
respecting energy consumption and cell coverage needs.
In this section, the complementary cumulative distribu-
tion functions (CCDFs) of the average power and the
maximum instantaneous voltage of an DCO-VLC-OFDM
symbol are shown for the SLM method and for the pro-
posed method combined with SLM. The simulation
parameters are presented in Table 1.
(8)
Table 1: Simulation parameters.
Parameter Value
Input subcarrier number 
(9) size of IFFT/FFT 
Modulation QAM,  QAM
Phase rotation factors ,,,
Figures 5 and 6 show the PAPR performance of proposed
method and SLM with U = 2, 4, and 8 compared with the
original DCO-OFDM system under 16QAM and 64QAM
modulations. It is clear that the proposed method
(alphap + SLM) has the lowest PAPR compared with
SLM VLC-OFDM and the original systems.
As an example in Figure 5, when the CCDF value is
10 − 3 the PAPR for the original VLC-OFDM is about
17.48 dB, whereas it is reduced from about 4 to 5 dB for
U = 2 to U = 8, respectively for SLM VLC-OFDM, at the
same time PAPR is reduced from 6 to 6.5 dB for proposed
method (SLM + alpha p) with U = 2 to U = 8 respectively.
As shown in Figure 7 for the original VLC system
based on DCO-OFDM is compared with using SLM and
proposed alpha combined with SLM method for rotation
phase factor U = 16 we see that the PAPR performance of
SLM method is better than the original and the proposed
alpha combined with SLM is better than the both.

Figure 5: Effect of (alphap + SLM) on the performance of PAPR VLC
system under 16 QAM modulation.
Figure 6: Effect of (alphap + SLM) on the performance of PAPR VLC
system under 64QAM modulation.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, the visible light communication system
using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing DCO-
OFDM was studied, this system suffer from high peak to
average ratio PAPR due to the nonlinearity characteristic
of LED. Therefore, to reduce the high PAPR, firstly, we
have applied the SLM technique which is widely used in
the RF system, then we proposed an expression for the
linear scaling factor αp combined with SLM. Simulations
results show that the proposed MSLM can effectively
reduce the PAPR of the VLC-OFDM system, compared to
R. Touhami et al.: Combined Envelope Scaling 5
Figure 7: Effect of (alpha p + SLM) with U = 16 on the performance
of PAPR VLC system under 16QAM modulation.
the traditional SLM technique. As a future works, we will
apply our proposed expression factor with other PAPR
reduction methods.
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