A comparison of IVHO and DVHO in heterogeneous VLC-RF networks

The heterogeneous network (HetNet) of visible light communication (VLC) and radio frequency (RF) wireless communication networks is regarded as a potential solution to the six-generation (6G) wireless communication networks, due to its combined advantages in high data rate transmission and ubiquitous coverage of these two networks. Vertical handover (VHO) algorithm is necessary in this hybrid network to ensure user mobility when the VLC channel is disrupted. There have been a few research studies investigating VHO in VLC-RF HetNets and most researchers adopt two basic methods, immediate VHO (IVHO) and dwell VHO (DVHO) as benchmarks of their algorithm design to check the performances of their proposed algorithms; however, none of them have analysed these two methods. In this paper, we evaluated latency, handover times, and connection ratio of these two basic algorithms under different channel conditions and device characteristics. Simulation results show that neither of them can achieve global optimization performance and their performances can be influenced by channel quality, received data rate, and device properties. This inspired us to design an adaptive dwell-based VHO algorithm which considers multiple inputs for future studies.