INVISIBLE 2.0: An enhanced interference-based handover technique for visible light communications in vehicular networks

Abstract

Since the last decade, Visible Light Communication (VLC) has represented a huge capacity to complement conventional Radio Frequency (RF) technologies in plenty of applications. The credibility of VLC in terms of power consumption has always been compared to RF. In this work, in addition to addressing this issue through a detailed power model, the co-existence of VLC and the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) cellular network in a vehicular environment has been empirically investigated. The coordination of data transmission among different technologies is managed through a novel vertical handover mechanism, namely INVISIBLE 2.0. This technique is triggered by the error probability to meet the 3GPP requirements on packet reception ratio while endorsing VLC as the preferred technology bearer. We demonstrate that INVISIBLE 2.0 achieves a more stable latency, and energy efficiency based on extensive simulation results.