ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Adv. Opt. Technol.
Sec. Optical Manufacturing and Design
This article is part of the Research TopicOptoelectronics, Ultrafast Optics, and Terahertz Radiations for Advanced Device ApplicationsView all 6 articles
Enhancement of Channel Capacity of IRS-aided OWC System for 6G Wireless Communication System
Provisionally accepted
- Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya School of Studies of Engineering and Technology, Bilaspur, India
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To meet the stringent ultra-reliable connectivity demands of 6G applications such as enhanced broadband and autonomous driving, optical wireless communication (OWC) is considered a key candidate technology. In this work, we investigate the performance of an Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS)-aided OWC system by analyzing the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), data rate, and sum rate through comprehensive MATLAB simulations. The impact of key system parameters on these performance metrics is systematically studied. Furthermore, an analytical expression for the optimal line-of-sight (LoS) channel gain is derived to maximize SINR, data rate, and sum rate . This optimization enables the selection of higher-order M-PAM modulation schemes, thereby enhancing channel capacity (CC), spectral efficiency (SE), and energy efficiency (EE) of the IRS-aided OWC system. Simulation results demonstrate that a maximum SINR of 22 dB can be achieved, for which 2-PAM is identified as the most suitable modulation scheme for reliable data transmission. Additionally, the proposed system achieves a maximum sum rate of 32 Mbps for two mirror arrays and two blockages, which is approximately three times higher than the corresponding results reported in the existing literature. These findings highlight the significant potential of IRS-assisted OWC systems as an enabling technology for future 6G networks.
Keywords: Bit error rate, data rate, energy efficiency, M-QAM, spectral efficiency, Sum rate
Received: 18 Oct 2025; Accepted: 19 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Pande, Shrivastava, Singh and Kumar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ashutosh Pande
Pankaj Shankar Shrivastava
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