A photovoltaic-based VLC system for simultaneous data transmission and energy harvesting

The growing demand for batteryless indoor Internet of Things (IoT) devices has stimulated interest in visible light communication (VLC) systems capable of simultaneously delivering information and harvesting energy from ambient illumination. This paper presents a photovoltaic (PV)-based VLC system employing asymmetrically clipped optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM) to enable simultaneous lightwave information and power transfer (SLIPT) using a single PV receiver. A bias-tee front-end separates the harvested direct-current (DC) component from the data-bearing alternating-current (AC) signal, while an adaptive normalized least mean squares (NLMS) equalizer is applied to mitigate illumination-dependent gain drift, PV nonlinearity, and maximum power point tracking (MPPT)-induced ripple. Comprehensive simulations evaluate bit error rate (BER), spectral efficiency (SE), and harvested power under practical indoor conditions. Results show that reliable communication with BER below 10 −3 is achieved at approximately 18 dB SNR for 16-QAM and 25 dB for 64-QAM. The system attains spectral efficiency approaching 1 bit/s/Hz and 1.5 bit/s/Hz for 64-QAM at moderate-to-high SNRs while maintaining energy-neutral operation at illumination levels above approximately 800 lux. These findings confirm the feasibility of PV-based VLC as an effective solution for low-power, batteryless indoor IoT applications.