Performance Analysis of Power Allocation Techniques for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access-based Visible Light Communication

Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology in the field of indoor wireless communication. VLC uses light emitting diodes (LEDs) as lighting sources as well as a means of data communication. The insufficient modulation bandwidth of LEDs tends to limit its utilization, however, the emerging solutions to this problem have helped VLC become a favorable option under the 6G umbrella. To improve the throughput of VLC systems, Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) has become a preferred solution over the traditional Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA) techniques. NOMA-based VLC systems have the possibility of offering high speed wireless communication with optimal power allocation (PA). Based on various strategies of PA implementation, multiple NOMA-based techniques have been proposed in the literature. Each technique aims to improve the performance on the basis of either bit error rate (BER) or average user data rate (AUDR). This study entails a detailed performance assessment and comparison between selected PA methods by comparing them in standardized but varying scenarios. The selected PA schemes are dependent on channel gain. On the basis of evaluation on BER, AUDR, and fairness, Improved Fractional Strategy (IFS) technique has been found to provide a fair balance across these metrics.