OMA Bandwidth Product: A Preeminent Performance Metric for Visible Light Communication.

Visible light communication (VLC) has garnered attention as a potent candidate technology for addressing the challenge of indoor wireless communication in the six generation (6G) network. However, the optimization methods and performance evaluation metrics in the radio frequency (RF)/VLC hybrid system should take into account the fundamental discrepancy between the RF and the VLC front-ends. Specifically, since the LED-based high speed VLC systems often require the bandwidth extension of equalizers, the 3 dB bandwidth broadly exploited in RF front-ends is difficult to accurately characterize the LED-based communication capacity. To tackle this issue, a novel metric based on the optical modulation amplitude (OMA) and bandwidth product (OBP) is proposed. The trade-off between OMA and bandwidth of the LED is firstly revealed. Moreover, the OBP metric is formulated under the trade-off mechanism and it is verified to be a constant from both the theoretical and simulation aspects. Furthermore, a testbed based on different LEDs with an ordinary equalizer is constructed. The experimental results demonstrate that the LED with a larger OBP has better expandable communication performance despite its low intrinsic 3 dB bandwidth. The proposed OBP metric can comprehensively characterize the communication capacity of various LEDs.