Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Fueled by the proliferation and popularity of various intelligent devices, the tremendous growth of bandwidth-intensive multimedia services, and the rapid increase in the number of base stations (BSs), the mobile wireless communication has experienced an unprecedented growth in data traffic in recent years. Although the currently deploying fourth generation (4G) network may accommodate the current data traffic surge, it will not be able to support the explosive growth in data traffic demands and huge number of devices in 2020 and beyond. In response, a flurry of initiatives has been undertaken by industry and academia to research enabling technologies for the next-generation (5G) and beyond wireless networks. It is unanimously agreed that the requirements of 5G and beyond networks, in terms of high throughput, low latency, high reliability, broadband coverage, etc., can only be met via seamless integration of diverse technologies and exploration of higher frequency bands, from 30 to 300 Gigahertz (GHz), or even around few hundreds of Terahertz (THz). This explains the increasing popularity of optical wireless communications technologies (OWC) such as free space optical communication (FSO) and the visible light communications (VLC).*******The main catalyst behind the increasing interest in VLC technology is the deployment of light emitting diodes (LEDs), which are predicted to be the ultimate light source in the near future. These LEDs are ecologically friendly and one of today's most energy-efficient technologies. VLC systems modulate the information bits and transmit the signals through LED transmitters with the aid of a varied instantaneous intensity of the visible light, and at the receiver photodiodes (PDs) are used for signal detection. VLC comes with lots of benefits: financial, technical, medical, and social. Unlike radio frequency (RF) communications, VLC is safe for humans. In addition, VLC is safe for all electronic equipment, and thus can be used in RF restricted areas (e.g., airplanes, chemical plants or hospitals). Since VLC can be incorporated into existing lighting infrastructures as a complementary functionality, the technology has a ubiquitous character and a low implementation cost. Furthermore, VLC is eco-friendly and provides worldwide, unregulated, and almost unlimited bandwidth. ******The long-term objectives of the proposed research program are to use tools and insights from information theory, communications theory, signal processing and convex optimization to solve some of the new technical challenges in addressing the requirement for low latency and high spectrum efficiency that future wireless networks will face. The research program will be advancing to such long-term objectives through the pursuit of several short-term objectives aiming at deriving the performance limits of VLC systems and designing energy efficient and secure hybrid VLC/RF communications schemes and protocols.***