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LiBeam: Throughput-Optimal Cooperative Beamforming for Indoor Visible Light Networks

  • Nan Cen
  • , Neil Dave
  • , Emrecan Demirors
  • , Zhangyu Guan
  • , Tommaso Melodia
  • Northeastern University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Indoor Visible Light Communications (VLC) are a promising technology to alleviate the looming spectrum crunch crisis in traditional RF spectrum bands. This article studies how to provide throughput-optimal WiFi-like downlink access to users in indoor visible light networks through a set of centrally-controlled and partially interfering light emitting diodes (LEDs). To reduce the effect of interference among users created by the partial overlap of each LED's field of view, we propose LiBeam, a cooperative beamforming scheme, based on forming multiple LED clusters. Each cluster then serves a subset of users by jointly determining the user-LED association strategies and the beamforming vectors of the LEDs. The paper first proposes a mathematical model of the cooperative beamforming problem, presented as maximizing the sum throughput of all VLC users. Then, we solve the resulting mixed integer nonlinear nonconvex programming (MINCoP) problem by designing a globally optimal solution algorithm based on a combination of branch and bound framework as well as convex relaxation techniques. We then design for the first time a large programmable visible light networking testbed based on USRP X310 software-defined radios, and experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed joint beamforming and association algorithm through extensive experiments. Performance evaluation results indicate that over 95% utility gain can be achieved compared to suboptimal network control strategies.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationINFOCOM 2019 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1972-1980
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9781728105154
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2019
Event2019 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, INFOCOM 2019 - Paris, France
Duration: Apr 29 2019May 2 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE INFOCOM
Volume2019-April
ISSN (Print)0743-166X

Conference

Conference2019 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, INFOCOM 2019
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityParis
Period04/29/1905/2/19

Keywords

  • Cooperative Beamforming
  • Programmable Testbed.
  • Throughput Optimization
  • Visible Light Networking

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