Flexible Hybrid Waveform Design for Optical Integrated Communication, Sensing, and Power Transfer Systems

The rapid growth of the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has enabled applications such as smart manufacturing and intelligent inspection, yet large-scale IIoT nodes commonly suffer from energy scarcity. Optical integrated communication, sensing, and power transfer (O-ICSPT) aims to sustainably provide low-power IIoT devices with enhanced data rates and centimeter-level sensing accuracy, and is regarded as a key paradigm for addressing this issue. As waveform design plays a vital role in O-ICSPT systems, this paper proposes a flexible hybrid maximum length sequence (MLS)-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform design scheme with joint intra-alternating current (AC) and AC–direct current (DC) amplitude allocation, enabling tunable trade-offs among the communication, sensing, and energy harvesting performance. The AC signal is constructed by time-domain concatenation of MLS and OFDM sequences. The intra-AC amplitude allocation controls the power distribution between the MLS and OFDM sequences, where adjusting their ratio strikes a balance for the trade-off between communication and sensing performance. The AC–DC amplitude allocation determines the ratio between the AC signal and the DC component, thus balancing communication–sensing performance and energy harvesting capability. The two amplitude allocation ratios jointly determine the transmitted waveform and the overall system performance under practical non-ideal conditions imposed by cutoff and saturation clipping. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed waveform design and demonstrate its outstanding potential for deployment in IIoT scenarios.