Optics Communications 457 (2020) 124693 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Optics Communications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom Experimental evaluation of pulse shaping based 5G multicarrier modulation formats in visible light communication systems Felipe T. Monteiro, Wesley S. Costa, José L.C. Neves, David M.I. Silva, Helder R.O. Rocha ∗ , Evandro O.T. Salles, Jair A.L. Silva Department of Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Visible light communications 5G Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing Generalized frequency division multiplexing Filter bank multicarrier ABSTRACT A performance comparison between the pulse shaping based multicarrier modulation formats, candidates for the fifth generation (5G) of wireless networks, applied to visible light communication (VLC) systems is presented in this paper. Simulation results show that filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) achieves better performance when compared to generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) and to the traditional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), in additive white Gaussian noise channels. Experimental results, obtained after propagation through a single-input single-output VLC channel, show that GFDM outperforms FBMC and OFDM, in particular for transmission distances  ≥ 1 m. Moreover, the error vector magnitude gain of ≈5 dB achieved by FBMC and GFDM at 2.5 m with values of signal-to-noise ratio greater than 10.5 dB suggests the adoption of these modulation formats in indoor VLC systems, if performance is the only considered requirement. 1. Introduction Mobile data is forecast to have a 53% annual growth rate from 2015 to 2020 and, it is estimated that 80% of this data is generated in indoor applications [1,2]. With the increasing demand for machine-to- machine communication, mobile networks must scale appropriately in order to provide higher speeds [3,4]. To cope with those requirements, the fifth generation (5G) wireless systems started to be deployed to provide ultra-reliable low-latency communication, as well as enhanced mobile broadband. Moreover, 5G networks should support multi-Gbit/s communication for individual users [3]. It is expected that multicarrier modulation schemes should be used in the physical (PHY) layer of 5G, to provide higher data rates and con- sequently increase spectral efficiency (SE) [5,6]. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a popular multicarrier technique that provides a straightforward way to accommodate high data rate links over wireless channels characterized by severe multipath fading, de- spite its drawback related to the high values of peak-to-average power ratio [7]. Another disadvantage of OFDM is the employment of a cyclic prefix (CP), an overhead used to reduce inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI), thus reducing SE [8]. Filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) is an alternative multicarrier scheme that avoids the need of CP, also due to the adoption of low out-of-band (OOB) emission subcarrier filters [9,10]. Generalized frequency division multi- plexing (GFDM) is a filter bank multicarrier technique that uses circular ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: helder.rocha@ufes.br (H.R.O. Rocha). filtering in block of subcarriers to reduce OOB emission [11]. However, unlike FBMC it implements CP to simplify subcarrier equalization [10, 12]. Currently, millimeter-wave (mmWave) is considered as one of the most promising technologies to provide wideband connectivity in 5G links [4,13,14]. Visible light communication (VLC) presents itself as a mmWave complementary system, manly due to similar advantages that includes abundant spectrum and high security [14,15]. In VLC, the information signal modulates a light emitting diodes (LED) in the visible light spectrum range around 400–700 nm [16–18]. 2. Related works Extensive descriptions about OFDM and GFDM considering, among others, the power spectral densities, can be found in [10] and [11]. In these works, the authors provided performance comparisons between the multicarrier schemes only in additive white Gaussian channels. The technical report provided in [6] suggest the FBMC technique as an alternative multicarrier modulation to increase spectral efficiency through the employment of a prototyping filter, whereas the studies specified in [19] addresses the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) issue that inflicts OFDM. Beyond the fact that no comparison with GFDM is addressed, the application of FBMC in VLC is not considered. In [14], the authors provided a VLC channel characterization con- sidering path loss and time dispersion. However, beyond the theoretical https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2019.124693 Received 4 May 2019; Received in revised form 30 September 2019; Accepted 2 October 2019 Available online 8 October 2019 0030-4018/© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.