This paper focuses on a channel feed-forward software defined equalization (FSDE) of visible light communication (VLC) multistate quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) based system, implemented in the LabVIEW programming environment. A highly modular platform is introduced; the whole experiment is simulated in software and then thoroughly explored and analyzed during practical measurements in the laboratory, simulating real-world situations. The whole platform is based on modified National Instruments software defined radios (NI SDR) and a commercially available Philips light source, often used in Czech government institutions. Three FSDE algorithms were tested: least mean squares (LMS), normalized least mean squares (NLMS), and QR decomposition based RLS (QR-RLS). Based on measurements, QR-RLS provides the best results, improving measured values by up to 10%. The experiments also show that the simulated results are very similar to real measurements, thus proving the validity of the chosen approach. The whole platform manages to improve measured data simply by making changes to the software side of the testing prototype.
Keywords: QR decomposition based recursive least squares (RLS); adaptive equalizers; feed-forward software defined equalization (FSDE); multistate quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM); software-defined radio (SDR); visible light communication (VLC).