Smart phones, tablets, and the rise of the Internet of Things are driving an insatiable demand for wireless capacity. This demand requires networking and Internet infrastructures to evolve to meet the needs of current and future multimedia applications. Wireless HetNets will play an important role toward the goal of using a diverse spectrum to provide high quality-of-service, especially in indoor environments where most data are consumed. An additional tier in the wireless HetNets concept is envisioned using indoor gigabit small-cells to offer additional wireless capacity where it is needed the most. The use of light as a new mobile access medium is considered promising. In this article, we describe the general characteristics of WiFi and VLC (or LiFi) and demonstrate a practical framework for both technologies to coexist. We explore the existing research activity in this area and articulate current and future research challenges based on our experience in building a proof-of-concept prototype VLC HetNet.

Wireless network data consumption is experiencing drastic increases due to growing demands of mobile services and applications. Deployed networks using Radio Frequency (RF) communications are characterized by a shared medium, limited available spectrum and limited ability to scale with increasing demand. Directional communications, including Visible Light Communications (VLC), can limit contention in controlled environments and provide scalability through spatial reuse of the medium. This solution can provide massive aggregate data capacity in indoor scenarios if properly distributed. In this paper we propose an indoor hybrid system that integrates WiFi and VLC luminaries. Our system utilizes (i) broadcast VLC channels to supplement RF communications and (ii) a handover mechanism between WiFi and VLC to dynamically distribute resources and optimize system throughput. This approach offers the bandwidth density benefits of VLC, provides a non-intrusive RF back-channel, maintains compatibility with conventional RF devices, and demonstrates excellent scalability. Analytical and simulation results show improvements in aggregate performance (i.e., throughput and delay) of the hybrid, when compared to either system acting alone.

Visible light communication (VLC) has wide unlicensed bandwidth, enables communication in radio-frequency-sensitive environments, realizes energy-efficient data transmission, and has the potential to boost the capacity of wireless access networks through spatial reuse. On the other hand, WiFi provides more coverage than VLC and does not suffer from the likelihood of blockage due to the line-of-sight requirement of VLC. In order to take the advantages of both WiFi and VLC, we propose and implement two heterogeneous systems with Internet access. One is the hybrid WiFi–VLC system, utilizing a unidirectional VLC channel as the downlink and reserving the WiFi backchannel as the uplink. The asymmetric solution resolves the optical uplink challenges and benefits from the full-duplex communication based on VLC. To further enhance the robustness and increase throughput, the other system is presented, in which we aggregate WiFi and VLC in parallel by leveraging the bonding technique in the Linux operating system. We also theoretically prove the superiority of the aggregated system in terms of average system delay. Online experiment results reveal that the hybrid system outperforms the conventional WiFi for crowded environments in terms of throughput and Web page loading time, and also demonstrate the further improved performance of the aggregated system when considering the blocking duration and the distance between the access point and the user device.

Visible light communications (VLC) is emerging as a new alternative to the use of the existing and increasingly crowded radio frequency (RF) spectrum. VLC is unlicensed, has wide bandwidth, supports new levels of security due to the opacity of walls, and can be combined to provide both lighting and data communications for little net increase in energy cost. As part of a lighting system, VLC is ideal as a downlink technology in which data are delivered from overhead luminaries to receivers in the lighting field. However, realizing a symmetric optical channel is problematic because most receivers, such as mobile devices, are ill-suited for an optical uplink due to glare, device orientation, energy constraints. In this paper we propose and implement a hybrid solution in which the uplink challenge is resolved by the use of an asymmetric RF-VLC combination. VLC is used as a downlink, RF is used as an uplink, and the hybrid solution realizes full duplex communication without performance glare or throughput degradation expected in an all-VLC-based approach. Our proposed approach utilizes a software defined VLC platform (SDVLC) to implement the unidirectional optical wireless channel and a WiFi link as the back-channel. Experiments with the implemented prototype reveal that the integrated system outperforms conventional WiFi for crowded (congested) multiuser environments in term of throughput, and demonstrate functional access to full-duplex interactive applications such as web browsing with HTTP.

Visible light communication (VLC), a form of indoor optical wireless access, has the potential to be an integral part of 5G networks due to the massive available spectrum in the visible light band. VLC has desirable high bandwidth density (b/s/m2) stemming from the directionality of optical signals, and can exist as part of installed infrastructure in LED-based luminaires. In spite of these benefits, it is best paired with complementary RF technologies to overcome limitations of line of sight, glare in optical uplink, and use cases requiring darkness. The combination of VLC and RF shows promise to overcome limitations of each medium if successfully paired. In this article we describe motivating factors for VLC usage in environments with a high density of user devices, present models for VLC integration with RF technologies, define system components required for practical deployment, and evaluate scenarios where VLC integration is most beneficial. We show that by selecting appropriate operating conditions for each of the RF and VLC solutions, we can realize substantial improvement in the resulting heterogeneous network design.

The emerging field of optical wireless communications (OWC) offers exceptional promise as a technology for next-generation wireless networks. High data rate capabilities and ultra-dense access point deployment will allow OWC to supplement traditional RF technologies and remove congestion from the crowded RF spectrum. When implementing OWC via intensity modulation with direct detection (IM/DD), peak optical power emission constrains the instantaneous optical power. Average optical power is also constrained by eye safety regulations and illumination requirements of infrared and visible light communication (VLC) systems, respectively. These constraints differ from the conventional electrical power constraint of RF and wireline systems. Accordingly, performance metrics such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) have been redefined in relation to the optical channel constraints in order to provide fair comparison across OWC implementations. In densely deployed networks, interference has a significant effect on system performance. Two key properties simplify the analysis of RF networks: 1) the relationship between electrical power and interference variance is modulation agnostic and 2) many interferers are typically assumed. The former allows SINR to be defined in terms of the channel constraint and the latter allows the aggregate disturbance from interference-plus-noise to be modeled as an additive Gaussian random component. In OWC networks, the optical power constraints relate to interference variance in a modulation specific manner, and the highly directional optical channel creates instances where a small set of interferers dominate the aggregate disturbance. In this work, we first derive bounds on the variance of OWC interference under the constraints of an OWC channel. We then evaluate the accuracy of assuming that interference follows a Gaussian distribution. Finally, we show results of a study in a testbed environment with 15 VLC-enabled LED luminaires in order to empirically evaluate OWC interference characteristics.