NOMA for Hybrid RF/VLC Systems Using Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces

In this article, Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRS) are used for Non Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) in hybrid Radio Frequency (RF) Visible Light Communications (VLC). The source broadcasts the symbols of K users. The broadcasted signal by the source is reflected by IRS on RF link to reach the relay node R with the same phase. Relay node detects the symbols of K users using Interference Cancelation (IC). Then, relay nodes broadcasts the symbols of K users on VLC link. We show that NOMA using IRS for hybrid RF/VLC offers 12–18 dB gain versus conventional hybrid RF/VLC without reflectors for \(N= 32\) $N=32$ ,168 reflectors. The main advantage of the paper is to enhance the throughput of RF/VLC systems using IRS. The main limitation of the paper is that the results are not valid when energy harvesting is performed.