Precoding Optimization for Rate Splitting Enabled Internet of Underwater Things Over Optical Wireless Underwater Turbulent Channels

With the booming development of the underwater Internet of Things, underwater devices and data volume are explosively increasing. Thanks to the advantages of high efficiency and low complexity, the emerging rate splitting multiple access (RSMA) can be integrated with underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC), which can help improve resource utilization and system performance. However, the oceanic characteristics are distinctive and pose great challenges for RSMA-enabled UOWC networks. Precoding design is crucial for benefitting from RSMA-enabled systems, and thus, we explore the precoding optimization for RSMA-enabled UOWC networks over underwater turbulent channels. Specifically, the RSMA-enabled UOWC network is modeled, where a combined turbulent channel involving the effects of absorption, scattering, and underwater turbulence is considered, and a message transmission scheme with rate splitting design is analyzed. A precoding problem is formulated to maximize the ergodic sum rate (ESR) under the constraint of total transmitted power. Since the accurate expression of ESR is a non-closed form and intractable, we first propose a consecutive Fenton-Wilkinson (CFW)-based ergodic rate approximation approach to solve this formulation problem. Fenton-Wilkinson moment matching is consecutively employed to achieve a closed-form and low-complexity expression of the ergodic rate, as only Fenton-Wilkinson moment matching method can offer closed-form solutions for underlying parameters of the approximating log-normal distributions. For further solving the non-convex precoding problem, the successive convex approximation (SCA) approach is adopted, which is particularly applicable for resource-limited underwater environments. The effectiveness of the proposed CFW approach and precoding strategy is evaluated by extensive simulation results for various user deployments and different network loads.