Received: 28 February 2018 Revised: 27 April 2018 Accepted: 2 May 2018 DOI: 10.1002/ett.3436 SPECIAL ISSUE Visible light communication – An architectural perspective on the applications and data rate improvement strategies Muhamamd Saadi 1 Touqeer Ahmad 2 M. Kamran Saleem 1 Lunchakorn Wuttisittikulkij 3 1 Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan 2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, USA 3 Department of Electrical Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand Correspondence Lunchakorn Wuttisittikulkij, Department of Electrical Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. Email: lunchakorn.w@chula.ac.th Abstract Demand for bandwidth hungry applications and mobile services is pushing an unquenchable need for wireless capacity. Existing radio frequency networks are characterized by shared medium, inadequate spectrum, and restricted user capacity. Solid state lighting is modernizing indoor as well as outdoor illumi- nation. The capability of quick switching of light emitting diode makes them superior to other lighting sources enabling simultaneous use as a communi- cation and illumination device. Visible light communication (VLC) using light emitting diodes is an attractive approach for many networking scenarios and is considered as a complementary technology for future heterogeneous wireless networks. This article presents an architectural perspective on the applications and data rate improvement strategies. A wide range of VLC applications have been investigated, comparison has been drawn with radio frequency, and generalized network architecture is also proposed. Numerous applications of VLC are data rate intensive, so data rate improvement approaches have also been studied. At the end, a lucid conclusion is drawn about the applicability, acceptability, and utilization of VLC and co-VLC–based systems. 1 INTRODUCTION In the era of smart devices, Internet of Things, and ubiquitous computing, there is an increased demand of wireless connectivity. The already existing communication technologies are running out of spectrum. 1 As a result of spectrum crunch in the shared radio frequency (RF) medium, network performance is deteriorated greatly because of interference and contention. 2 Therefore, we need a new wireless medium. 3 With the recent advances in the field of solid-state lighting, white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are anticipated to become a key player in future lighting. Compared with conventional (incandescent and fluorescent) lighting, LEDs offer various advantages such as low power consumption, long lifetime, lower voltage requirements, smaller sizes, cooler operation, low cost, and swift switching. The quick switching property of LED into a communication carrier gives rise to a new “dual-paradigm,” ie, simultaneous illumination and communication. 4 There are two methods that are commonly used for the construction of white LED. The first method is to combine red, green, and blue (RGB) lights in an appropriate ratio, and the resulting emitted light will be white in color. Such LEDs are also referred to as tri-LED (T-LED). The second method for constructing white LED is to use phosphor. On a blue LED, coating of yellow phosphor is applied. This results in the emission of yellow light. Some yellow light is absorbed by phosphor and is made to mix with non-absorbed blue light to produce desired white colored light. The former method Trans Emerging Tel Tech. 2018;e3436. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ett Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 of 21 https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.3436