Gigabit polarization division multiplexing in visible light communication

In this Letter, polarization division multiplexing is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for the first time that we know of, in visible light communication systems based on incoherent light emitting diodes and two orthogonal groups of linear polarizers. Spectrally efficient 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation Nyquist single carrier frequency domain equalization is employed to obtain a maximum spectral efficiency. We achieve an aggregate data rate of 1 Gb/s, with bit error rate results for two polarization directions both below the 7% pre-forward-error-correction threshold of 3.8 x 10(-3) after 80 cm free-space transmission. Moreover, the cross talk between x and y polarization is also discussed and analyzed. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America