Visible light communications (VLC) have emerged as a strong candidate for meeting the escalating demand for high data rates. In this paper, we consider a VLC network, where multiple access points (APs) serve both energy-harvesting users (EHUs), i.e., users who harvest energy from light emitted by diodes and information users (IUs), i.e., users who gather data information. In order to jointly balance the achievable sum rate at the IUs and the energy harvested by the EHUs, the paper considers maximizing a network-wide utility, which consists of a weighted sum of the IUs sum rate and the EHUs harvested energy, subject to individual IU rate constraint, individual EHU harvested-energy constraint, and AP power constraints, so as to jointly determine the direct current (DC) bias value at each AP, and the power of the alternating-current (AC) signals of the users. A difficult non-convex optimization problem is solved using an iterative approach which relies on inner convex approximations, and compensates for the used approximations using proper outer-loop updates. The paper further considers solving the special cases of the problem, i.e., maximizing the sum rate, and maximizing the total harvested-energy, both subject to the same constraints. Numerical results highlight the significant performance improvement of the proposed algorithms, and illustrate the impacts of the network parameters on the performance trade-off between the sum rate and harvested-energy.

中文翻译：

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用于联合信息和能量传输的协作 VLC 网络中的直流偏置和功率分配

可见光通信 (VLC) 已成为满足对高数据速率不断增长的需求的有力候选。在本文中，我们考虑一个 VLC 网络，其中多个接入点 (AP) 为能量收集用户 (EHU)（即从二极管发出的光中获取能量的用户）和信息用户 (IU)（即收集能量的用户）提供服务。数据信息。为了共同平衡 IU 的可实现总和率和 EHU 收集的能量，本文考虑最大化网络范围的效用，该效用由 IU 总和率和 EHU 收集的能量的加权总和组成，取决于个体IU 速率约束、单个 EHU 收集能量约束和 AP 功率约束，以便共同确定每个 AP 的直流 (DC) 偏置值，以及用户交流（AC）信号的功率。使用依赖于内凸近似的迭代方法解决了一个困难的非凸优化问题，并使用适当的外循环更新来补偿使用的近似。本文进一步考虑解决该问题的特殊情况，即最大化总速率和最大化总收集能量，两者都受到相同的约束。数值结果突出了所提出算法的显着性能改进，并说明了网络参数对总速率和收集能量之间的性能权衡的影响。并使用适当的外循环更新来补偿使用的近似值。本文进一步考虑解决该问题的特殊情况，即最大化总速率和最大化总收集能量，两者都受到相同的约束。数值结果突出了所提出算法的显着性能改进，并说明了网络参数对总速率和收集能量之间的性能权衡的影响。并使用适当的外循环更新来补偿使用的近似值。本文进一步考虑解决该问题的特殊情况，即最大化总速率和最大化总收集能量，两者都受到相同的约束。数值结果突出了所提出算法的显着性能改进，并说明了网络参数对总速率和收集能量之间的性能权衡的影响。