Enabling on‐aircraft visible‐light communications in low‐light conditions

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Abstract
Visible‐light communications (VLCs) are emerging as a valid alternative to radio‐frequency systems for the provision of Internet connectivity to aircraft passengers through the LED reading lamps. In this Letter, the authors investigate the minimum required level of emitted flux in order to support the communication with the users' terminals. A VLC system employing 1 lm of flux is able to achieve an average per‐user capacity comparable with the one currently in use for 4G (6 bit/s/Hz) over an electrical bandwidth of 10 MHz, which is sufficient to support the latest multimedia services (40 Mb/s for Blu‐ray video streaming).