Efficient Resource Allocation for RSMA-Enabled OIRS-Assisted VLC Systems With Imperfect CSI

Efficient resource allocation is essential in visible light communication (VLC) systems. This study explores the use of optical intelligent reflecting surfaces (OIRS) to enhance the data rate and overall power efficiency of VLC systems under imperfect channel state information (IPCSI), leveraging rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) for efficient interference management. To this end, we introduce a multi-objective optimization framework to explore the fundamental trade-off between maximizing effective rate and minimizing effective power. In contrast to conventional energy efficiency (EE) approaches, the proposed framework offers flexible system design by allowing the relative importance of rate and power objectives to be adjusted through the reward function. Additionally, it encourages fair resource allocation by penalizing imbalanced rate and power distributions among receivers. We propose a robust resource allocation framework based on the critical actor asynchronous meta-advantage (MA3C) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate substantial robustness to IPCSI via MA3C. Additionally, the integration of RSMA significantly boosts the total data rate and reduces total power, outperforming other benchmarks.