A Novel Approach to Fair Power Allocation for NOMA in Visible Light Communication

This paper addresses the growing demand for high-bandwidth wireless data transmission by exploring Visible Light Communication (VLC) as an alternative to Radio Frequency (RF) communication. In indoor scenarios, VLC systems utilize existing lighting infrastructure for high-speed data transmission. To meet the data rate demands of 5G and beyond, the paper proposes Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) and introduces Empirical Fair Optical Power Allocation (EFOPA) to simplify resource allocation in NOMA. EFOPA integrates NOMA with VLC, utilizing the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) optimization algorithm for offline resource allocation planning. The approach then derives a simplified power allocation equation from ABC outcomes, ensuring fair resource distribution among users. EFOPA is compared against existing power allocation methods, demonstrating superior fairness and reduced computational complexity. Numerical evaluations reveal EFOPA consistently outperforms other methods across various channel conditions, making it a robust and efficient solution for fair power allocation in NOMA-VLC systems.