Investigation on random access in a VLC system with multipacket reception in the presence of hidden devices and obstructions

Due to the directionality of light, the hidden device problem and the obstruction cannot be ignored for carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA)-based uplink visible light communication (VLC). In this paper, we introduce multipacket reception (MPR) to handle the hidden device problem in VLC system. We model the traffic of the device with on/off Markov source. With the unsaturated traffic, we formulate a two dimensional (2D) Markov chain to model the CSMA/CA-based slotted random access procedure to evaluate the effects of hidden devices and obstructions on the performance of MPR-aided VLC system, which are mapped into the transition probabilities of the Markov chain. Then, we analyze the throughput and the reception power efficiency (RE) of MPR-aided VLC system with the obstructed optical channel. Numerical results show that the effect is negative when hidden devices or obstructions appear solely. But when they appear simultaneously, they will interact with each other to mitigate the negative effects.