Toward Indoor Simulations of OPV Cells for Visible Light Communication and Energy Harvesting

The massive deployment of IoT connected devices brings up different modern problems, such as radiofrequency spectrum saturation and energetic requirements. Organic photovoltaics are good candidates for indoor energy harvesting and data reception in a simultaneous lightwave information and power transfer scenario applied for IoT, at which the non-directive channel significantly contributes to the optical system performance. However, achieving the channel impulse response of diffuse links requires complex numerical approaches. This article presents the first ever OPV model used in a Monte-Carlo ray-tracing simulation, associated to theoretical and experimental validation. Finally, for the first time, an optical simulation with an OPV receiver is realized in a cubic environment, from which the received optical power and generated current distributions were obtained. Results show that the employed OPV is suited for indoor energy harvesting to supply low power IoT nodes, and with proper dedicated front-end, could manage to receive optical data in a SLIPT scenario.