MAC layer performance of the IEEE 802.15.7 visible light communication standard

Abstract

Visible light communications (VLC) is a high-speed wireless communication technology that has recently emerged. VLC uses the illumination infrastructure to meet broadband needs of bandwidth-hungry devices. Its high data rate, immunity to electromagnetic interference, ability to operate in an unlicensed band and high reuse factor position VLC as a strong alternative to existing communication technologies. The physical and medium access control (MAC) layers of VLC have been standardised in IEEE 802.15.7. Yet, theoretical performance bounds of the MAC layer have not been explored in detail so far. In this paper, we derive Markov-based performance bounds for the MAC layer of IEEE 802.15.7. We provide a thorough study of throughput, delay, power consumption, collision probability, transmission probability, access probability and packet discard probability using analytical analysis and simulations.