Abstract :
At the time of this writing, there is substantial research interest in the subject of visible light communications (VLC) owing to its ability to offer significant traffic offloading potential in highly crowded radio frequency (RF) scenarios. We introduce the user-centric design of VLC for heterogeneous networks (HetNet), where three key aspects are identified and elaborated on: signal coverage quality, system control, and service provision aspects. More explicitly, the concepts of amorphous cell formation as well as separated up-link (UL) and down-link (DL), decoupled data and control, dynamic load balancing (LB), etc., all demand radically new thinking. The advocated user-centric VLC design is of key significance in the small-cell scenarios of the emerging 5G design philosophy.
Keywords :
5G mobile communication; optical communication; resource allocation; telecommunication control; telecommunication traffic; 5G design philosophy; HetNet; amorphous cell formation; decoupled control; decoupled data; dynamic load balancing; heterogeneous networks; radiofrequency scenarios; service provision aspects; signal coverage quality; system control; traffic offloading; user-centric design; visible light communications; Bandwidth; Computer architecture; Fluorescence; Integrated optics; Light emitting diodes; Lighting; Microprocessors; Optical devices; Throughput;
