Dynamic load balancing for hybrid Li-Fi and RF indoor networks

In this paper, a dynamic load balancing problem for a mobile hybrid Li-Fi and mm wave RF network is studied. Even though Li-Fi networks can provide extremely high data throughputs, the spatial distribution of such high data rates may not be uniform. It has been shown that this spatial data rate fluctuations can be successfully reduced by a RF network augmented to the Li-Fi network. In this study, a dynamic load balancing algorithm is proposed to find the optimum access point (AP) assignment in order to satisfy certain average per user data rate constraints while achieving minimum outage performance. Furthermore, a data rate threshold is defined to identify whether users should be served by a Li-Fi AP or a RF AP. The simulation results show that this threshold has a significant effect on the outage performance of the hybrid network. The results further show that the optimum threshold which achieves the minimal outage probability is much lower than the per user data rate requirements.