A QoE-maximization-based vertical handover scheme for VLC heterogeneous networks

Abstract Visible light communication (VLC), not only provides indoor illumination, but also offers broadband connection. It has the benefits of huge bandwidth, high security, low cost, and health safety. However, duplex communication, user mobility, and seamless coverage are becoming challenging tasks in VLC networks. A VLC heterogeneous network (VLC-HetNet) that combines VLC and existing radio networks, in which a good vertical handover (VHO) scheme is critical to guarantee continuous transmission, has been proposed to solve these problems. In this paper, we propose a new VHO scheme to maximize the quality of experience (QoE) of a user. When a user makes a handover between VLC and the RF network, the influence on the user’s QoE may be positive (defined as the QoE profit) or negative (the reduced QoE value is defined as the handover cost). The handover decision is made in order to enhance the QoE and reduce the handover cost of the user, by formulating the problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). The simulation results show that the proposed VHO scheme is adaptive to user movement and achieves a relatively high average QoE, low handover failure probability, and few handover times.