Performance Analysis of a Hybrid PLC–VLC Communication System with Coded OFDM and Realistic Indoor Optical Propagation

Abstract

The paper presents a hybrid Power Line Communication–Visible Light Communication (PLC–VLC) system for indoor broadband connectivity using convolutionally coded 16-QAM OFDM in the PLC backbone and DCO-OFDM in the VLC downlink. The system is modeled in MATLAB, incorporating frequency-selective PLC channel characteristics and indoor optical propagation with both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) components. A 6 m × 6 m × 3 m room with four ceiling-mounted LED arrays is evaluated in terms of received optical power, RMS delay spread, illuminance, and achievable data rate. Simulation result are indicated a maximum received optical power of 658.52 μW, an RMS delay spread of 3.03 ns, and a maximum data rate of 75.7 Mbps. These results are demonstrated that the proposed PLC–VLC architecture can provide reliable, energy-efficient, and cost-effective indoor wireless communication for smart building and IoT applications.