Transmitter design and AE–AR region characterization for NOMA-SLIPT UWOC systems with uniformly distributed message and Imp-SIC

Abstract

This paper investigates simultaneous lightwave and information transfer (SLIPT) based non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) in underwater optical wireless communication (UWOC) systems. At the user signal separation (SS) based SLIPT scheme is employed. Imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) at the near user is considered. Firstly, we derive the maximum allowable electrical power for message symbols at the transmitter, ensuring input to the laser diode lies within the linear region and. A novel linearity-constrained transmitter design is proposed for the uniformly distributed message, followed by calculations of instantaneous data rate and instantaneous harvested energy for both users. Then, closed-form expressions for average data rates (AR) and average energy harvested (AE) under weak turbulence-induced fading channels using Holtzman’s approximation are derived. The tightness of the approximation is confirmed by Monte-Carlo simulations. AE–AR boundaries for both users show an initial rise and subsequent decline in data rates with increased harvested energy, owing to higher bias values restricting transmitter power. The study also examines trade-offs between AE and AR across various system parameters including beam divergence angles, imperfection of SIC, power allocation coefficients, and water types, is conducted. We observe shifting and shrinking/expansion of the AE–AR region depending upon the variation of the various system parameters. We also show that the discussed SS scheme is general and encompasses time-switching (TS), and power-splitting (PS) schemes as special cases. We also briefly discuss as to how the developed framework could be extended to more than two users. In summary, the overall effective energy consumption deduces owing to the adoption of SLIPT at the users, making the considered setup more energy-efficient.