Location awareness using Angle-of-arrival based
circular-PD-array for Visible Light Communication
Seongsu Lee
Dept. of EE, Yeungnam Univ./
LED-IT Fusion Technology Research Center
Gyeongsansi, Gyeosangbuk-do, Republic of Korea
le2sung@naver.com
Abstract—LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) are considered
by many researcher to represent the next-generation
lighting technology. Furthermore indoor LED lighting
has a potential to converge with IT technology such as
Visible Light Communication (VLC) based Location
Awareness. In this paper, we suggest Angle of Arrival
(AOA) estimation algorithm under VLC environment in
order to find out the location of a light source (LED)
using circular-PD-array. We propose truncated-
weighting method in order to enhance the accuracy of
estimated AOA. Through simulations, we confirm that
the number of PDs in circular-PD-array affects the
AOA estimation error performance of a light source. In
addition, our proposed truncated-weighting scheme
shows better AOA estimation performance than those of
simple average and Max schemes. Based on AOA
algorithms, we also investigate the performance indoor
location estimation. As a consequence, we can final that
our truncated scheme also shows better location
awareness performance than other conventional ones.
Keywords- location awareness, circular-PD-array,
LED, truncated-weighting
I. INTRODUCTION
Next-generation lighting considers the usage of
LED because of its advantages superior to existing
fluorescent and incandescent lighting in terms of long
life expectancy, high tolerance to humidity, low power
consumption, and minimal heat generation lighting.
Furthermore, there have been many attempts to
converge LED with IT technology due to the global
R&D activities of green-it technology [1-3]. Among
lots of possible applications, indoor LED lighting can
be considered for constructing green infra with energy
saving and additionally providing LED-IT
convergence services such as Visible LAN [4][5] and
VLC based location awareness and navigation
services [6] and so on.
For example, we spend lots of time in the
shopping mall [7]. In large complex shopping mall,
there are lots of shopping shops, theaters, water parks,
natural forest. Therefore, location awareness to
* Correspondence to: Sung-Yoon Jung (e-mail:
syjung@ynu.ac.kr)
978-1-4673-4728-0/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Sung-Yoon Jung*
Dept. of EE, Yeungnam Univ./
LED-IT Fusion Technology Research Center
Gyeongsansi, Gyeosangbuk-do, Republic of Korea
syjung@ynu.ac.kr
navigate the destination is very important issue.
However, the conventional navigation using GPS is
not working indoors. An alternative location service
by using WLAN has a problem that the position
accuracy is low. For example, it is difficult to estimate
the height exactly. If the position error of the height is
greater than the height between floors, it may cause
big problem. Therefore, conventional navigation is
inappropriate for indoor navigation. Alternative
solution for indoor navigation is VLC based location
awareness scheme. Because indoor LED infra will be
definitely equipped for providing lighting
functionality, indoor LED lighting has a possibility to
provide relatively high accuracy of position estimation
combined with VLC technology.
In this paper, we suggest Angle of Arrival (AOA)
estimation algorithm in order to look for the location
of a light source (LED) based on circular-PD-array.
AOA estimation is the key technology for supporting
location awareness services. We propose truncated-
weighting method in order to enhance the accuracy of
AOA estimation. Through simulations, we confirm
that the number of PDs in circular-PD-array affects
the estimation error of a light source and truncated-
weighting scheme shows better estimation
performance than those of simple average and MAX
schemes. By adopting AOA algorithms to the indoor
location awareness, we can prove that, our proposed
truncated scheme also shows better location
estimation performance.
This paper is organized as follows. In section II,
the system, environment (channel, noise and
intersymbol interference) modeling and proposed
AOA scheme is described. In section III, simulation
results of the proposed scheme are given. Section IV
is the conclusion.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
A. SYSTEM MODEL
Fig. 1 simply describes the system model for the
proposed scheme. As shown in the figure, total K PDs
480 APCC 2012
are distributed in the circular manner with uniform Pr = H (0) ⋅ Pt . (4)
angle differences. The position of i-th PD is
determined as follows.

π (1)
PPD (i ) = R ⋅ × i (rad )
K −1

where R denotes the radius of circular PD array.

Figure 2.  LED sensitivity [10]

Figure 1.  System model for estimating AOA based on circular PD

array

B. CHANNEL MODEL

In the paper, we assume an optical wireless
channel. Then, the channel DC gain is given as [8][9]
Figure 3.  PD sensitivity [9,11]

 (m + 1) A m
 2π D 2 cos (φ )Ts (ψ ) g (ψ ) cos(ψ ) C. NOISE AND ISI MODEL
 d
(2)
H (0) =  ,0 ≤ ψ ≤ Ψ c Next, we discuss noise and intersymbol
 0 ,ψ > Ψ c
interference (ISI) issues. The received signal power
 Pr Signal is given as [8]


where A is the physical area of the detector in a PD,
Dd is the distance between a transmitter and a
receiver, ψ is the angle of incidence and φ is the
angle of irradiance. Ts (ψ ) is the gain of an optical
filter. g (ψ ) is the gain of an optical concentrator. ψ c
denotes the width of the field of vision at a receiver.
The optical concentrator g (ψ ) can be given as [8]
 n2
 ,0 ≤ ψ ≤ Ψ c
g (ψ ) =  sin 2 Ψ c
 0 , 0 ≥ Ψc
 (6)
Pr Signal =  [ i =1 hi (t ) ⊗ X (t )]dt
T
LEDs
(5)
0
where X (t ) is the transmitted signal, hi (t ) is the
optical wireless channel, and T means the duration of
signal. We deal with OOK modulation with
rectangular transmitted pulses. We assume that the
receiver output contain a Gaussian noise having a
total variance N that is consisted of shot noise,
thermal noise and intersymbol interference by an
optical path difference [8] shown as
(3)
2 2
N = σ shot + σ thermal + γ 2 PrISI
2

where n denotes the refractive index. In addition, where the received power due to inter symbol
cos m (φ ) and cos(ψ ) denote the LED sensitivity (Fig. interference Pr ISI is given as
2) and the PD sensitivity (Fig. 3), respectively.
Then, the received optical power Pr becomes
Pr ISI =  [ i =1 hi (t ) ⊗ X (t )]dt
∞ LEDs
(7)
T

481
 Fig. 4 shows the example of optical channel hi (t ) Pr (i ) = Pt × H i (0) + N (i ), i = 1, 2,  , K (10)
[8].
where H i (0) and H (i ) represent the channel DC gain
and noise plus ISI of i-th PD, respectively.
In this paper, we proposed the truncated-
weighting algorithm to estimate AOA of LED. Based
on the received power of each PD, the estimated

AOA θ is determined as

θ =  m =−1 cm ⋅ θ (imax − m)
1
(11)

where imax = max i Pr (i) and θ (i) = π × i (rad ) In

K −1
addition, the weighting coefficient {cm }1m=−1 is defined
as

Figure 4.  Example of optical wireless channel impulse response Pr (imax − m) (12)

cm = .

[8]. 1
P (i − m)
m =−1 r max
If the duration of signal is long enough, the ISI is
negligible. Therefore, the main noise source is shot
and thermal noises. A shot noise variance is given by III. SIMULATION
[8]
A. AOA ESTIMATION
In this section, we simulate the proposed scheme
2
σ shot = 2qγ ( Pr signal + Pr ISI ) B + 2qI bg I 2 B (8) in the model room with 5m × 5m × 3m size. Simulation
parameters are summarized in Table I.
where q is the electronic charge, Pr signal is signal
TABLE I.  PARAMETER
power, Pr ISI is the received power by inter symbol
transmitted optical power 0.02[W ]
interference, B is equivalent noise bandwidth and Ibg
semi-angle at half power 58[deg.]
is background current. We define the noise bandwidth
factors I 2 = 0.562 . The thermal noise variance is given FOV at a receiver 90[deg.]
as [8]
detector physical area of a PD 1[cm2 ]
2 8π kTk 16π 2 kTk Γ 2 2 3 (9) gain of an optical filter 1.0
σ thermal = η AI 2 B 2 + η A I3 B
G gm
optical concentrator gain 1.0
where the first two terms represent feedback-resistor detector responsivity 0.54[ A / W ]
noise, and FET channel noise, respectively. K is
Boltzmann’s constant, Tk is absolute temperature, G data rate 100[ Mb / s]
is the open-loop voltage gain, η is the fixed background light current 5100[ µ A]
capacitance of photo detector per unit area, Γ is the
absolute temperature 300[ K ]
FET channel noise factor, gm is the FET
transconductance and I 3 = 0.0868 . fixed capacitance 112[ pF / cm2 ]
FET channel noise factor 1.5
D. PROPOSED AOA SCHEME
FET transconductance 30[mS ]
The received power of each PD in circular array
follows (4). Positions of each PD in the array are also open-loop voltage gain 10
determined according to (1). Then, the Received
power of i-th PD in circular array is given as shown
below: Figure 5 shows the simulation scenario which
changes the direction of LED on the circle with 3m

482
radius. For comparison with proposed truncated- 



weighting scheme (‘Weighting’), we include simple 




AOA estimation schemes based on 1) the angle of



MAX value PD (‘Max’), 2) the average angles of
MAX value PD and its left and right PDs (‘Avg’). 

Figure 6 shows the AOA estimation errors of three 

schemes according to the number of PDs. From the 

figure, we can see that the AOA estimation error is

getting lower as the number of PDs is increasing. In      

   

addition, we can notice that the estimation (c)

performance of the proposed scheme shows better
Figure 6.  The Comparison of AOA estimation performance
performance than those of two simple schemes. between three schemes ( LED Angle [from π 4 to π 2 ] ). (a)
However, the performance gap is getting narrower as
the number of PDs in the circular array increases. K = 9 (b) K = 13 (c) K = 17
Interestingly, we can also notice that ‘Average’
scheme shows the same performance with ‘Max’
scheme. B. LOCATION AWARENESS
Next, we investigate a location awareness
performance using propose AOA estimation
algorithm. Figure 7 shows the system model of
location awareness. We can know AOA of LED1 and
AOA of LED2 using proposed algorithm. In addition,
we also have absolute coordinates of LED1 and
LED2. Under the given information, we try to
estimate the Location of MS (mobile station).

Figure 5.  AOA simulation scenario

 



 



Figure 7.  The system model location awareness


From the figure, distance between LED1-MS


         
 ( Dd 1 ) and LED2-MS ( Dd 2 ) are given as shown
(a) below:
 



 h (13)
 Dd 1 = 



sin(θ1 )


 h (14)

Dd 2 = 
sin(θ 2 )

         


(b) Finally, the x-axis location of MS is given as

( D1 + x1 ) + ( x2 − D2 ) (15)
x=
2

483
where 



 

 



D1 = h 2 + Dd21 − 2 × h × Dd 1 × cos( π2 − θ1 ) (16)





 
2 2
D2 = h + D − 2 × h × Dd 2 × cos( 2 − θ 2 )
d2
π (17)

     


Figure 8 shows the corresponding location (c)

awareness simulation scenario. By moving MS from Figure 9.  The comparison of location awareness performance
0 to 10m, we calculate the position error of MS between three scheme. (a) K = 9 (b) K = 13 (c) K = 17
location

IV. CONCLUTION
In this paper, we consider AOA estimation
schemes based on circular PD arrays and
corresponding location awareness method. By
proposing truncated-weighting scheme and
Figure 8.  Location awareness simulation scenario
comparing it with other simple schemes (‘Max’,
‘Average’), we found that 1) the number of PDs
For comparison with proposed truncated- increases, the AOA estimation and location
weighting (‘Weighting’) scheme, we also include awareness performance are getting better; 2) the
simple location estimation results based on ‘Max’ and proposed truncated weighting scheme shows the best
‘Avg’ AOA estimation schemes. Figure 9 shows the performance than other schemes if the number of PDs
MS distance errors of three schemes according to the are small.
number of PDs. From the figure, the location
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
awareness error is getting lower as the number of PDs
is increasing. In addition, we can notice that the This research was conducted under the industrial
estimation performance of the proposed scheme also infrastructure program for fundamental technologies
shows better performance than those of two simple (No. 10033630) which is funded by the Ministry of
schemes. However, the performance gap is getting Knowledge Economy (MKE, Korea) and also
supported by the royalty R&D program of
narrower as the number of PDs in the circular array
MKE/KEIT. [No. 10042305, Smart LED headlight
increases.
development using inter vehicle LED communication].
 

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