A Blind Timing Synchronization Algorithm For DCO-OFDM VLC systems

Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems are more vulnerable to timing synchronization problems due to the employed incoherent modulation scheme. In this work, a blind timing synchronization algorithm is introduced to DC biased Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) systems, based on cyclostationarity of the received signal that relies on second-order statistics only. It does not require any channel impulse response, as it is a blind estimator. The performance of the proposed estimator is evaluated using computer simulations in the Lab-view software and also validated through experimental results obtained using the VLC testbed using Universal Software defined Radio Peripheral (USRP) hardware.