Performance Analysis and Node Selection of Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Aided Visible Light Communication for Parallel Vehicles

In the visible light communication (VLC) for parallel vehicles, the light emitted by the headlamps cannot reach the photodiode (PD), which is the receiver installed on another vehicle. To solve this problem, the mirror array-based intelligent reflecting surface- (IRS-) aided VLC system is designed for parallel vehicles, and the system performance with different number of mirrors and transmission distance is analyzed. The maximum distance between adjacent IRSs is calculated via the exhaustive method, and the nearest neighbor iterative search (NNIS) algorithm is proposed for IRS node selection. Numerical results show that the SNR increases with the number of mirrors increasing. If the number of mirrors is 6 x 6 in the IRS, the maximum distance between adjacent IRSs is 37 meters. When the interval between adjacent IRSs is 32 meters, the required BER can be satisfied with merely three IRSs working together according to the NNIS algorithm.