Liquid Crystal-Based RIS for VLC Transmitters: Performance Analysis, Challenges, and Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper explores the integration of liquid crystal-based reconfigurable intelligent surfaces in VLC transmitters to improve data rate uniformity and illumination, demonstrating significant performance benefits through simulation.

Contribution

Introduces a novel LC-based RIS-enabled VLC transmitter that performs light steering and amplification, enhancing data rate and illumination over traditional methods.

Findings

High data rate and illumination performance in simulations

Effective light steering and amplification capabilities

Potential to meet indoor VLC system requirements

Abstract

This article presents a novel approach of using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) in the transmitter of indoor visible light communication (VLC) systems to enhance data rate uniformity and maintain adequate illumination. In this approach, a liquid crystal (LC)-based RIS is placed in front of the LED arrays of the transmitter to form an LC-based RIS-enabled VLC transmitter. This RIS-enabled transmitter is able to perform new functions such as transmit light steering and amplification and demonstrates very high data rate and illumination performance when compared with traditional VLC transmitters with circular and distributed LED arrays and the more recent angle diversity transmitter. Simulation results reveal the strong potential of LC-based RIS-aided transmitters in satisfying the joint illumination and communication needs of indoor VLC systems and positions VLC as a critical essential block for next generation communication networks. Several challenging and exciting issues related to the realization of such transmitters are discussed.