Power Allocation for Indoor NOMA Based VLC Systems with Meta-Heuristic Optimization Algorithms

Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology that realizes short-range wireless optical communication and illumination simultaneously. The use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in lighting has accelerated the development of short-range wireless optical technology. However, the limited switching frequency of LEDs used in lighting restricts the communication speed of VLC systems. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) methods can be used to improve the sum rate in VLC systems. In this study, meta-heuristic optimization algorithms are proposed to calculate the power allocation coefficients of users in indoor NOMA-based VLC systems. During the calculations, many constraints used fairness and optical intensity, which were not taken into account in many studies in the literature. The proposed algorithms are compared with the previously proposed methods according to the sum rate results, considering the number of users increases and the user signal strength values differ. The obtained results revealed that metaheuristic methods demonstrate a significant improvement in terms of sum rate compared to other methods. In addition, the effects of parameters such as sum rate, fairness, and optical intensity on each other are investigated in the simulation environment. © 2023 Institute of Electrical Engineer of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC. © 2023 Institute of Electrical Engineer of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC.