Peak-to-average power ratio reduction in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing visible light communications system using a combination of a genetic algorithm and a hill-climbing algorithm.

The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique has been used widely in visible light communications (VLC) systems to combat intersymbol interference. At the same time, the inherent drawback of OFDM with a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is brought into OFDM visible light communications (VLC-OFDM). Furthermore, considering the limited dynamic range characteristics of light-emitting diodes, the performance degradation caused by a high PAPR is more serious in VLC-OFDM. In this paper, we propose a partial transmit sequence (PTS) technique based on the combination of a genetic algorithm (GA) and a hill-climbing algorithm (GH-PTS) to solve the problem of high PAPR. GH-PTS is a modified PTS technique based on GA-PTS. Essentially, GH-PTS is a local optimization of GA-PTS. Simulation results show that the optimized technique is able to reduce PAPR more effectively without any loss of bit error rate performance than the GA-PTS technique in VLC-OFDM system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]