Ricerc@Sapienza

The request for higher quality Internet services and the increase of data traffic has recently led the communication world to face up the problem of bandwidth scarcity due to the RF spectrum saturation. In this regard, optical wireless communication and one of its paradigm, namely Li-Fi (Light Fidelity), has emerged as innovative technology to support wireless connectivity in both indoor scenarios and other harsh environments such as the underwater case. Furthermore, Li-Fi represents a green solution to be employed in the so-called smart environments relying on the 5G technology and beyond. For these reasons, in 2009 the IEEE 802.15.7 Visible Light Communication Task was formed, with the first standard for VLC PHY and MAC released in 2011 and further developments currently ongoing.
The great perspective of Li-Fi is significantly due to the spread of light emitting diodes (LEDs) as incoherent solid state lighting sources. From a communication point of view, by conveniently modulating the optical signal of a LED, high data rates can be achieved.
The ease of integration of optoelectronic hardware has pushed the researchers to the investigation of massive multiple-input multiple-output (M-MIMO) architectures, originally developed for 5G cellular networks, with the goal to achieve higher communication performance for a large number of simultaneous users.
This project focuses on Li-Fi technology for the implementation of optical Massive MIMO systems for:
- Indoor optical communication
- Underwater optical communication
By referring to such challenging scenarios, the main issues to be addressed will concern the physical layer, including the investigation of efficient modulation and equalization schemes, and data link layer, especially regarding the problem of multiple access.
The goal of the project is to provide advances with respect to the state of art by means of both theoretical and practical investigation of the problems disclosed above.