Two Types of Mixed Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (X-OFDM) Waveforms for Optical Wireless Communication

Intensity modulation and direct detection (IM-DD) based optical wireless communication (OWC), requires the modulated signal to be real and non-negative. To satisfy the requirements, this paper proposes two types of mixed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (X-OFDM) waveforms. The Hermitian symmetry (HS) characteristic of the sub-carriers in the frequency domain, guarantees the signal in the time domain to be real, which reduces the spectral efficiency to 1/2. For the odd sub-carriers in the frequency domain, the signal in the time domain after the inverse fast fourier transform (IFFT) is antisymmetric. For the even sub-carriers in the frequency domain, the signal in the time domain after the IFFT is symmetric. Based on the antisymmetric and symmetric characteristics, the two types of X-OFDM waveforms are designed to guarantee the signal in the time domain to be non-negative. With M sub-carriers in the frequency domain, the generated signal in the time domain has 3M/2 points, which further reduces the spectral efficiency to 1/3. The numerical simulations show that, the two types of X-OFDM waveforms greatly enhance the power efficiency considering the OWC channel with the signal-dependent noise and/or the signal-independent noise.