BER Performance Analysis for Downlink Nonorthogonal Multiple Access With Error Propagation Mitigated Method in Visible Light Communications

In order to mitigate the error propagation (EP) effect on the bit error rate (BER) performance due to the imperfect successive interference cancellation for the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based visible light communication (VLC) downlinks, adjustable bit rate superposition coding (ABRSC) and sample-and-sum successive interference cancellation (SSSIC) decoding schemes are proposed in this paper. Based on the modified fixed-power allocation (MFPA) strategy, the closed-form expressions of BER are derived for the two-user case with on-off keying, and further extended to the multi-user scenario. The residual probability of EP is introduced and derived to theoretically assess the effectiveness of the proposed ABRSC and SSSIC schemes. Monte Carlo simulation is also conducted to validate the analytical BER results. The BER performance of the NOMA-based VLC system with multiple users is further analyzed and discussed in detail. It is found that under the total average optical transmission power constraint, the allocated average optical transmission power to current user should be higher than that to all rest of users, i.e., the power allocation factor (PAF) is supposed to be greater than 1/2, in order to avoid the error floor issue of current user, hence facilitating the successful implementation of SSSIC. Besides, increasing the bit-rate factor (BRF) could mitigate the effect of EP, and larger BRF leads to more efficient outcomes in alleviating the effect of EP.