Impact of different receiver geometries on a reconfigurable intelligent surface assisted multi-cell VLC system in the presence of light path blockage.

We report the effect of integrating metasurface-aided reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and data rate of a multi-cell visible light communication (VLC) system. RIS has been deployed in the channel between transmitter and receiver to redirect the reflected light in the desired directions, even in the absence of line-of-sight (LoS) links. Results show that the introduction of RIS has improved average SINR but reduced average illumination level compared to a no-RIS system. As the quantity of RIS increases, a discernible improvement in the maximum SINR value is observed. Here, three different receiver geometries, namely, a photodiode (PD), freeform diversity receiver (FDR), and modified FDR (MFDR), have been adopted. The impact of individual receivers has been reported in the presence of light path blockage. MFDR geometry is found to be most suitable with more coverage probability compared to the other two receivers. With (40 ×24 ) RIS area, during blockage, MFDR maintains an average SINR of 21.95 dB, which is 97.29% and 14.24% greater than PD and FDR, respectively.