Impact of a Randomly Placed Terminal on LiFi Performance

Abstract

The ambitious goal of light-fidelity (LiFi) technology to provide seamless user mobility in indoor environments requires strong link connections to confront any stochasticity that possibly comes out. In this context, a robust LiFi network should effectively address the spatial random terminal locations inside its coverage volume. In contrast with the previously published works dealing mainly with randomness in two dimensions, the present study aims to provide a more realistic framework by treating the problem in the three-dimensional space. In view of the foregoing, a LiFi configuration is adopted where a terminal lies at a random position inside its truncated conic coverage volume at a distance from the transmitter. Some key statistics for a distance-related metric and the channel gain, including the probability density function, are derived in the first place. The investigation is then headed on the performance analysis of the LiFi link by providing closed-form expressions of the outage probability and the average bit error rate for on-off keying assuming indirect modulation/direct detection at the receiver. A multiuser scenario with several users placed inside the coverage volume is examined as well. A series of numerical results is also depicted to provide valuable insights into how the random terminal placement affects the link performance. © 1972-2012 IEEE.