Optics Communications 444 (2019) 147–153

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Optics Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom

The phase estimation of geometric shaping 8-QAM modulations based on

K-means clustering in underwater visible light communication
Xingbang Wu, Nan Chi ∗
The Key lab of Electromagnetic Wave Information Science, Department of Communication Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: With more and more human underwater activities carrying out, underwater visible light communication has
Underwater visible light communication received increasing attention worldwide. To solve the problem of noise and nonlinearity in underwater visible
(UVLC) light communication systems, we proposed a phase deviation correction algorithm based on K-means clustering
Geometric shaping (GS)
to correct the phase deviation of special-shaped 8-QAM constellations. The experimental results indicate the
K-means clustering
performance of the circle has the maximum improvement after using the phase deviation correction algorithm.
Phase deviation correction
Before the use of the K-means phase correction algorithm, the highest data rate that circle can achieve is 1.3875
Gbps. The highest data rate increases to 1.4625 Gbps after applying the algorithm.

1. Introduction
The VLC system uses visible light as a carrier for information and in-
tegrates lighting and communication functions. It is an environmental-
friendly technology that uses Light emitting diode (LED) as light source.
Compared with traditional wireless communication, VLC includes ad-
vantages such as high efficiency, high confidentiality, free spectrum
license, zero RF interference, etc. The development of VLC attracts
worldwide attention [1–3].
With the rapid development of society, there are more and more
activities carry out underwater. High-speed long-distance underwa-
ter communications become indispensable. Compared with traditional
acoustic and radio frequency underwater communication technology,
the VLC technology in underwater environment own the following
advantages: (1) The equipment is easy to move, compact and integrate;
(2) The cost is lower; (3) Communication quality is less affected by
the underwater environment; (4) High speed is easy to realize [4,5].
Many studies based on LD have achieved high data rates by combining
underwater visible light communication with high-speed devices and
advanced modulation formats. The data rate of LD directly encoded
with QAM-OFDM is up to 4.8 Gbps [6]. Xiaoyan Liu, et al. achieved
a data rate of 3.4 Gbps using underwater using OOK [7]. ChenTing
Tsai, et al. demonstrated QAM-OFDM data transmission at 14.8 Gbps
over 1.7 m [8]. The underwater visible light communication (UVLC)
system becomes a research hotspot and draws extensive attention in-
ternationally. Though the (UVLC) system has numerous advantages,
high-frequency attenuation of LED response, nonlinear effect, etc. have
restricted the development of it [9].
In comparison with conventional rectangular quadrature amplitude
modulation (QAM) formats, Geometric Shaping (GS) technique using
nonuniformly spaced constellation with equiprobable symbols, which
is research mainstream of high order QAM modulation techniques,
is demonstrated to have high bandwidth efficiency for transmission
of information in VLC system. Because of the impact of commercial
LEDs, the SNR is limited, so higher order QAM transmission con-
ditions are constrained. Considering the utilization efficiency of the
frequency band and the SNR comprehensively, 8-QAM is suitable for
being researched in underwater VLC system. The special-shaped 8-
QAM signal is loaded onto the LED and amplified by the amplifier and
transmitted in the underwater channel. Due to the nonlinearity caused
by electrical amplifiers and optoelectronic devices, the phase deviation
of special-shaped 8-QAM constellation will generate.
It is well known that machine learning algorithms are very suitable
for the situation when problems are difficult to analyze with basic
physics and mathematics or cannot be clearly described [10]. The appli-
cation of nonlinear signal processing algorithm is beneficial to solve the
nonlinear problem in underwater visible light communication system,
and realize the processing of channel nonlinearity and the detection
of nonlinear signals. Different from the traditional hard decision, the
nonlinear algorithm in machine learning can classify the data more
accurately, reduce the bit error rate, and promote the development of
underwater visible light communication, which has broad application
prospects.
In this paper, as shown in Fig. 1 we improved the constellation
shaping schemes proposed by C. Thomas [11], and proposed a method
of correcting phase deviation of special-shaped 8-QAM signal based
on K-means clustering. The transmission performance of special-shaped
8-QAM signal is improved by phase correction.

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: nanchi@fudan.edu.cn (N. Chi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2019.03.020
Received 13 November 2018; Received in revised form 6 March 2019; Accepted 8 March 2019
Available online 11 March 2019
0030-4018/© 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.
X. Wu and N. Chi Optics Communications 444 (2019) 147–153

Fig. 1. The constellations of special-shaped 8-QAM signal.

Fig. 2. The process of the angle correction algorithm.

2. Principle of k-means clustering phase correction algorithm After clustering by K-means, the phase deviation of each cluster is
corrected by the phase correction algorithm we proposed. The specific
We Proposed four geometric shaping schemes of traditional 8-QAM process is as follows:
(1) Obtained the correction vector by making a difference to co-
constellations, including circle, star, circle26best, square. K-means clus-
ordinates of the center points of the clusters to coordinates of the
tering is a kind of vector quantization method commonly used in ⇀ ⇀
initialization constellation points. 𝑢𝑖 , 𝑣𝑖 (𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 8) Move the center
machine learning. K-means clustering algorithm divides the training
points of the clusters to the standard constellation points along the
samples into k different clusters and finds the center point of each
correction vector. In other words, the coordinates of center points of the
cluster. K-means clustering is an algorithm that only considers the
clusters are subtracted from the vector to migration to the coordinates
statistical laws of the received data, and it includes the following of initialization constellation points. are the vector of each cluster to
steps [12]: the origin before phase correction and the vector of each cluster to the
(1) Initialize the center points of the clusters. The standard constel- origin after phase correction, respectively.
lation points are used as the initialization center points. ⟨⇀ ⇀ ⟩
𝑢𝑖 , 𝑣𝑖
(2) Calculate the shortest distance between each point and the
cos 𝜃𝑖 = (𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 8)
current cluster center points. |⇀| | ⇀ |
|𝑢𝑖 | |𝑣𝑖 |
| || |
(3) Iterative the center points to make the bias less than the thresh- | || |
old, otherwise the first step to the third step need to be repeated. 𝜃𝑖 = arccos 𝜃𝑖

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X. Wu and N. Chi Optics Communications 444 (2019) 147–153

Fig. 3. The BER performance of special-shaped 8-QAM constellations under different SNR.

∑
𝜃 = 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛( 𝜃𝑖 )(1 = 1, 2, … , 8)

The process of the angle correction algorithm is shown in Fig. 2.

3. Simulation

Shot noise from photodetectors and ambient light, thermal noise

produced by the amplifier, and background noise caused by ambient
light are main noise sources that affect communication quality of VLC
system [13]. In order to study the effects of various factors on system
performance, we conducted a series of simulations. The simulation
model includes the following sections. At the transmitting end, non-
linear mapping of signal is introduced. Then the signal is up-sampled
and up-converted, then passed through an exponentially attenuated
visible channel, and finally down-converted and down-sampled. Firstly,
we calculate the minimum Euclidean distance of the four special-
shaped 8-QAM constellations under normalized power. The results are
shown in Table 1. The four special-shaped 8-QAM constellations are
Fig. 4. The complementary cumulative distribution function.
shown in Fig. 1. Circle and star are referred to the research of Nölle
M. et al. [14]. Circle26 is optimized through the special-shaped 8-QAM
Table 1
constellation named triangular proposed by Zhao J, et al. [9]. Fig. 3 Minimum Euclidean distance and PAPR of the special-shaped
shows the relationship between the BER performance of special-shaped 8-QAM constellation.
8-QAM constellations and SNR. The illustration in Fig. 3 are baseband Constellation Min_Euclidean PAPR
complex signal constellations of the four special-shaped 8-QAM signals. Circle 0.9283 1.0698
As can be seen from Fig. 3, with the increasing of SNR, the BER Star 0.9198 1.2565
gradually decreases and tends to a fixed value. The BER performance Square 0.8164 1.1546
of the circle is the best, while square is the worst under the same Circle26 0.9011 1.2606

SNR when meeting the BER threshold of 3.8 × 10-3 with 7% forward
error correction (FEC). As can be seen from Table 1 the PAPR of circle
and square are 1.0698 and 1.2606 respectively. Circle meets the FEC
threshold requirement under the SNR of 7.3, while square satisfies
the FEC threshold requirement when the SNR is 8. According to the
experimental results, the performance of the circle is 0.7dB greater than
the square. When the SNR is small, considering the imbalance of IQ
distribution of circle26, its BER performance is worst compared with
other constellations.
Due to the nonlinearity of the device, there are severe signal dis-
tortions in the VLC system. As we mentioned before, LED is the main
source of VLC system. The nonlinear relationship between the voltage
and current of the LED causes nonlinearity in the conversion of the
electrical signal and the optical signal. In addition, when the voltage
is under the turn-on voltage of LED or above the threshold voltage,
signal will be clipped and distort. Therefore, a compromise between
nonlinearity and modulation depth must be considered. Table 1 shows
the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of four special-shaped 8-QAM
constellations. The smaller the PAPR of Constellations are, the deeper
modulation depth and the better the nonlinear resistance will be. The
complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of PAPRs for
the four special-shaped 8-QAM constellations in a single carrier system,
which means the probability of exceeding a certain threshold is shown
in Fig. 4. The PAPR threshold of circle is smallest, so it will be more
stable to the nonlinear effects.
Machine learning trains a series of samples to infer the potentially
useful structural properties of the data set or a function of the trend of
the data. Therefore, the length of the training sequence directly affects
the effects of machine learning. Due to the influence of the nonlinearity
at the transmitting end, the GS signal has a phase deviation. In this
part, the phase deviation of the special-shaped 8-QAM constellation
points under different training sequence lengths is calculated. K-means

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X. Wu and N. Chi
Fig. 5. The relationship between the phase deviation and training sequence length.
Fig. 6. Experimental setup.
clustering algorithm is used to estimate and correct the phase deviation
of the special-shaped 8-QAM signal after channel transmission. The
phase deviations were simulated and corrected by K-means clustering
algorithm under different training sequence lengths. The minimum
training length under which the phase deviations become stable dur-
ing the simulation is called saturated training sequence length. The
saturated training sequence length of circle, star, square and circle26
are 3000, 3000, 8000 and 4000 respectively. There is also a minimum
training sequence length when the deviation angle error is less than
a certain range. The minimum training sequence length of circle, star,
square and circle26 are 300, 600, 3000 and 3000. The simulation result
is shown in Fig. 5. Illustrations in Fig. 5 correspond to the received
signal constellation at the minimum training sequence length and the
length of the saturated training sequence respectively.
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Optics Communications 444 (2019) 147–153
4. Experimental set up
4.1. The system model
This section mainly research on special-shaped 8-quadrature am-
plitude modulation constellations in a single-carrier underwater VLC
system, and use MATLAB to define a new modulation function to
generate the shaped baseband signal constellation. The experimental
setup is shown in Fig. 6. At the transmitter, the digital 8-QAM signal
is generated by the offline MATLAB program. Before signal transmis-
sion, the arbitrary signal generator (AWG) (Tektronix AWG710) is first
synchronized with the oscilloscope (HP85545A) clock. The data file is
converted to a waveform file and loaded into the AWG to generate
a transmitted signal. The signal is partially compensated for the fre-
quency attenuation at the high frequency component by a hardware
X. Wu and N. Chi Optics Communications 444 (2019) 147–153

Fig. 7. BER versus signal Vpp.

Fig. 8. Constellations before and after phase correction . (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

pre-equalizer [9]. Our equalizer is a T-bridge RLC network and the signal and achieve a larger modulation depth. The bias (Mini-Circuit
resonant frequency of this circuit is set to 465MHz. The power amplifier ZFBT-4R2GW-FT+) is used to couple the AC and DC components of the
(Mini-Circuit ZHL-6A-S+) is used to enhance the drive capability of the drive signal, and the DC component provides a suitable static operating

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X. Wu and N. Chi
Fig. 9. Q factors before and after using the K-means phase correction algorithm under different data rate.
point for the RGB-LED. The electrical signal is modulated onto a blue
chip of a high performance RGB-LED and converted into an optical
signal.
The transmission channel is a 1.2 m sink. The optical signal is
transmitted in a sink filled with pure water.
At the receiver, a commercial PIN photodiode (Hamamatsu S10784)
having a pair of differential outputs is used to detect signals and
perform photoelectric conversion. In order to obtain a higher received
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), a lens (70 mm diameter and 100 mm focal
length) is used to focus light. Transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) are
used to convert current signals into voltage signals, making them easy
to process in subsequent circuits. Differential connections are used to
reduce common mode noise in internal circuits and free space at the
receiver. Data is recorded via channel 1 (CH1) and channel 2 (CH2) of
a digital sampling oscilloscope (OSC, Agilent DSO54855A) for offline
digital signal processing
5. Experiment results and discussion
Firstly, under the condition of a bias current of 140 mA, a data rate
of 1.2 Gbps, and SNR of 10 dB, we measured the BER performance of
special-shaped 8-QAM constellations by changing the Vpps. The results
are shown in Fig. 7. With the increasing of Vpps, the BER decreases
firstly and then increases due to nonlinear relationship between the
voltage and current of LED. Under the condition of meeting the BER
threshold of 3.8 × 10-3 with 7% forward error correction (FEC), circle
operates with the widest voltage range about 0.53 V, while the oper-
ation range of square is about 0.47 V. Star comes in second, next is
circle26. The results are in line with the simulation results for PAPR.
The phase deviation of constellation occurs due to the effects of
noise and nonlinearity. We measured the Q factors before and after
using the K-means phase correction algorithm under different data rate.
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Optics Communications 444 (2019) 147–153
The results are shown in Fig. 9. Constellations before and after phase
correction are shown in Fig. 8 and the inserts of Fig. 9. The red ‘×’
represents the clustering center of constellation before phase correction
and The blue ‘×’ represents the clustering center of constellation after
phase correction. After using the K-means phase correction algorithm,
the BER performance of each constellation has been improved to some
extent. The BER performance of the circle has been upgraded by orders
of magnitude when the data rate is 1.2 Gbps, and the corresponding
phase deviation is 3.9276◦ . The BER For star is significantly improved
under the data rate of 1.125 Gbps, and the corresponding phase de-
viation is 11.5186◦ . The phase deviation of circle26 is 14.2416◦ and
achieve maximum BER performance improvement when the data rate is
1.3125 Gbps. At the maximum data rate of 1.5 Gbps for the experiment,
the phase deviation of square is 12.2579◦ along with the largest BER
performance gain. Fig. 8 indicates the performance of the circle has the
maximum performance improvement. For circle, the improvement of Q
factor is 1.4941 dB when the data rate is 1.1625 Gbps. When the data
rate reaches 1.5 Gbps, the Q factor of star’s achieves 1.0866 dB boost.
Compared with star, the upgrade of Q factor for square is more obvious
and reaches 2.3436 dB at the same data rate. For circle26, when the
data rate is 1.3125 Gbps, the improvement of Q factor is 1.6521 dB.
Before the use of the K-means phase correction algorithm, the highest
data rate that circle can achieve is 1.3875 Gbps. The highest data rate
increases to 1.4625 Gbps after applying the K-means phase correction.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, we compare the performance of four special-shaped
8-QAM constellations in a single carrier UVLC system. The BER per-
formance of signal at different Vpp is investigated. Due to nonlinear
relationship between the voltage and current of LED, the severe distor-
tion the signal will occur when the VPP is too high or too low. Among
X. Wu and N. Chi Optics Communications 444 (2019) 147–153

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