On the Performance of Visible Light Communications Systems with Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the impact of channel uncertainty on visible light communication systems employing non-orthogonal multiple access, deriving new BER expressions and highlighting the effects of noisy and outdated CSI on system performance.

Contribution

It introduces novel closed-form and approximate BER expressions for VLC-NOMA systems under imperfect CSI, providing insights into performance degradation due to channel uncertainties.

Findings

Noisy CSI causes slight BER degradation.

Outdated CSI can significantly impair performance.

Channel gain changes due to mobility affect system reliability.

Abstract

Visible light communications (VLC) have been recently proposed as a promising and efficient solution to indoor ubiquitous broadband connectivity. In this paper, non-orthogonal multiple access, which has been recently proposed as an effective scheme for fifth generation (5G) wireless networks, is considered in the context of VLC systems, under different channel uncertainty models. To this end, we first derive a novel closed-form expression for the bit-error-rate (BER) under perfect channel state information (CSI). Capitalizing on this, we quantify the effect of noisy and outdated CSI by deriving a simple approximated expression for the former and a tight upper bound for the latter. The offered results are corroborated by respective results from extensive Monte Carlo simulations and are used to provide useful insights on the effect of imperfect CSI knowledge on the system performance. It was shown that, while noisy CSI leads to slight degradation in the BER performance, outdated CSI can cause detrimental performance degradation if the order of the users' channel gains change as a result of mobility