Demonstration of RF-VLC Hand-over using Receiver side Channel Selection

Visible light communication (VLC) is a potential alternate technology to cater to high data rate demands of emerging mobile devices. RF being a technology with large coverage, the coexistence of RF and VLC technologies brings up solutions for high data rate and seamless coverage capabilities. In a scenario of RF-VLC coexistence network, the narrow coverage area of VLC zones can act as hotspots for large date download and high-speed multimedia streaming capabilities, while RF can provide wide area coverage. We report experimental demonstration of real-time high quality multimedia data streaming over a heterogeneous RF-VLC network with the receiver selecting the suitable transmitted channel based on signal strength measurement. The RF AP is created to provide a large coverage with overlapping to narrow beam VLC coverage. Dual receivers capable of simultaneously receiving RF and VLC signals is installed on a mobile cart to demonstrate the user mobility across the heterogeneous network. The quantitative characterization of the RF-VLC hand-over performance is also discussed.