Performance Analysis of SLIPT-Enabled Optical Wireless System for Energy-Harvesting IoT Networks

Visible light communication (VLC) with energy harvesting (EH) has emerged as a promising enabler for sustainable, batteryless, and autonomous Internet of Things (IoT) networks. By leveraging the dual role of optical signals for communication and power transfer, EH-VLC links can significantly enhance the energy efficiency and lifetime of autonomous, low power IoT deployments. In this work, we consider a line-of-sight (LoS) simultaneous lightwave information and power transfer (SLIPT)-enabled EH-VLC system. For it, we analyze energy-centric performance measures useful for autonomous optical EH-IoT deployments. Specifically, we derive closed form expressions for the bounds of the amount of fading (AoF) and for the fading statistics-averaged energy efficiency (FSAEE). To gain additional insights, we derive an upper bound for the energy harvested outage probability (EHOP). Throughout the performance analysis, we assume two different turbulence effects, modeled by Gamma-Gamma and log-normal (Gaussian in the log domain) fading. The closed form analytical expressions are validated through simulations and benchmark comparisons, and the analysis is further extended to anL-branch diversity receiver, which significantly reduces the EHOP while improving link robustness. The performance analysis and simulation results provide valuable design directions for the deployment of SLIPT-enabled, EH-VLC-based next generation sustainable IoT networks.