Vertical Handover-Based Hybrid Radio Frequency/Visible Light Communication Scheme for e-Health Applications (VHO-HeA)
Abstract
Maximizing spectral efficiency and capacity in conventional radio frequency (RF) systems is crucial for indoor wireless communication with high data rate demands. Utilizing visible light communication (VLC) bands addresses this challenge, though VLC's reliance on Line of Sight (LoS) connectivity poses obstacles. This paper introduces a Vertical Handover-based Hybrid RF/VLC for intra-SDWBAN architecture to meet diverse Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Prioritizing emergency data enhances network reliability. The proposed hard switching algorithm addresses a multi-objective optimization problem, minimizing outage and blocking probabilities, worst-case latency, and packet error rate while maximizing throughput and system fairness. Pareto-simulated annealing efficiently selects either the VLC or RF link to meet system constraints. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid RF/VLC scheme significantly improves performance, especially at lower signal-to-interference plus noise ratios, with reduced outage probability (25% to 55%), enhanced throughput (40% to 60%), decreased packet error rate (39% to 50%), and improved system fairness (8% to 10%) compared to standalone VLC systems.