Indoor Mixed Dual-Hop VLC/RF Systems through Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Abstract

In this letter, a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted dual-hop visible light communication (VLC)/radio frequency (RF) system in indoor scenarios is proposed, in which the first link is a VLC link while an RIS is deployed in the second RF link. More specifically, a relay first converts the received optical signal into the RF signal blue using either decode-and-forward or amplify-and-forward protocols and then forwards it to the RIS. The RIS alters the electromagnetic response of the impinging waves to provide connectivity between the RF destination and optical source. Based on this model, closed-form expressions for the outage probability and bit error rate (BER) are derived. Also, an asymptotic analysis for the outage probability is presented. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify our analytical results.