A Survey of Channel Modeling Techniques for Visible Light Communications

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a subset of Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) originally based on Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) for data transmission in an imperceptible way to human vision. Thanks to its wide license-free bandwidth, high security, and its low cost, VLC becomes a revolutionary alternative to the Radio Frequency (RF) networks. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of VLC channel modeling techniques. It describes the main VLC channel components. It gives different channel models in indoor, outdoor, underwater, and underground environments. It draws a synthesis comparing the algorithms proposed in each environment. Moreover, the paper gives concluding remarks and future research directions for VLC channel models.