Bit-shuffle coding for flicker mitigation in visible light communication

Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology for both wireless communications and illumination via light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Although conventional run-length-limited (RLL) codes are employed to mitigate modulation-induced flickers, they can suffer from data rate reduction, worst-case bit sequences, and hardware overheads, resulting in a performance bottleneck. In this paper, we introduce a novel VLC data-encoding algorithm using bit shuffling to resolve these problems while alleviating light flickers. In contrast to existing RLL coding approaches, bit shuffling with an Omega network can generate codewords dynamically, which guarantees short runs of consecutive 0's or 1's, avoidance of worst-case bit sequences, and a relatively short code length. To illustrate the performance of hardware implementations, we discuss the hardware designs of the proposed bit-shuffle coding scheme. Our simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the bit-shuffle coding approach in terms of mitigation of flickering, transmission efficiency, and hardware overheads.