Optical Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted MIMO VLC: Channel Modeling and Capacity Characterization

Although the multi-antenna or so-called multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission is an enabling technology for past generations of wireless communication systems, its application to visible light communication (VLC) still faces a critical challenge due to the strong spatial correlation of VLC channels, which makes it difficult to achieve sufficient spatial multiplexing gain. This paper proposes to use optical intelligent reflecting surfaces (OIRS) to tackle this challenge. Firstly, we characterize the extremely near-field channel condition in the optical frequency range and reveal a peculiar “inter-element interference (IEI) free” property of the OIRS-reflected channel, where the OIRS reflecting elements can be individually configured to align with one pair of transmitter and receiver antennas without causing interference to each other. Next, we characterize the OIRS-assisted MIMO VLC capacities under different power constraints at the transmitter antennas, and then proceed to maximize them by jointly optimizing the OIRS element alignment and transmitter emission power. In particular, we propose two algorithms for the OIRS optimization, namely, location-aided interior-point algorithm and log-det-based alternating optimization algorithm, to balance the performance versus complexity trade-off; while the optimal transmitter emission power is derived in closed form. Numerical results are provided to validate the capacity improvement of OIRS-assisted MIMO VLC against the VLC without OIRS and demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithms compared to baseline schemes.