Design of an optical attocells configuration for an indoor visible light communications system

Visible light communications (VLC) is deemed as a promising technology for future indoor cellular communications due to its unique features, namely unlicensed free spectrum, high bandwidth, high security, and low power consumption. A small base stations (BS) called optical attocells are mounted on the ceiling of the room to provide communication and illumination simultaneously. In this paper, an optical attocells configuration model is proposed with the aim of providing a uniform illumination distribution while the field of view (FOV) is optimized to increase the receiver gain, furthermore, improving the received power and SNR distribution. The average illumination level of 635.6113 Lx is obtained, besides that, the minimum received power is improved from −2.17 to −1.286 dBm as compared with the previous studies. The proposed optical attocells model has used small number of LEDs chips, and hence, a reduction in link power consumption by 30.6% is achieved. Also, it was resolved the blind area at the centre of the room, and the total received power at the centre is improved from 3.2 to 5.967 dBm.