Rate-stabilized and load-balanced handover management for subway hybrid LiFi and WiFi networks

Abstract

In this paper, a subway interchange mobility (SIM) model is first proposed to simulate the interchange behavior of users in the subway scenario. Then, an event-triggered distributed network architecture is presented and employed in the subway hybrid light-fidelity (LiFi) and wireless-fidelity (WiFi) networks (HLWNets). Next, a rate-stabilized and load-balanced handover management scheme for subway HLWNets is developed. By using the event triggering mechanism, the proposed architecture can significantly reduce the measurement reports uploaded by users. By the proposed handover method, not only the network load can be balanced with very low complexity, but also the data rate of users is stabilized without compromising network throughput. Finally, by simulation, the effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated. Simulation results show that the proposed architecture reduces up to 92.67% in the number of measurement reports compared to the conventional periodical structure. Moreover, the proposed handover method decreases the fluctuation index by 13.5% and 25%, respectively, compared to the standard and separate optimization algorithm (SOA)-based handover methods. Besides, the proposed method also has significant advantages in terms of Jain's fairness index and user satisfaction.