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Evaluating High-Impact Scenarios for IRS in Blockage-Affected IoT-VLC Systems

  • Roma Tre University
  • Boston College

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Visible Light Communication (VLC) has been shown to have potential as a supplement to Radio Frequency (RF) in indoor environments.city In particular, dense Internet of Things (IoT) deployments can be connected to VLC and offloaded from RF. However, the intensity modulation techniques used for VLC lead to unique challenges including angle-dependent signal conditions and susceptibility to blocking when occlusions obstruct the Line-of-Sight (LoS) path. Intelligent Reflective Surfaces (IRSs) offer a potential low-complexity solution to mitigate these outage scenarios. In this article, we introduce key considerations related to VLC deployments with IRS support for dense IoT networks. Potential applications are introduced, along with comparative analysis of outage trends in VLC-only and combined VLC+IRS deployments. The network capacity impacts of various system parameters are also discussed, along with an overview of important design challenges and future directions for the research community.

Original languageEnglish
JournalIEEE Internet of Things Magazine
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2026

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Software
  • Information Systems
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computer Networks and Communications

Keywords

  • blockage avoidance
  • Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS)
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • temporal dependency
  • visible light communications (VLC)

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