SDN-enabled Li-Fi/Wi-Fi wireless medium access technologies integration framework

The integration of Li-Fi and IEEE 802.11x Wi-Fi wireless access networks represents an opportunity for users to receive secure ubiquitous indoor HD video and voice services, and internet service providers to diversify services portfolio. For the first time, this paper introduces an application-medium access control (MAC) cross-layer scheme for integrating Li-Fi and Wi-Fi access networks using software-defined networking. The scheme comprises a flow admission control mechanism, which inter-operates with a mechanism that dynamically allocates resources of Li-Fi and Wi-Fi MAC layers. It leverages the capacity diversity of Li-Fi and Wi-Fi access networks to support OoS per-flow service class. The proposed scheme runs in the SDN controller and interacts with SDN agents functionalities running in the APs, which consider traffic parameters of applications running on mobile devices to efficiently support real-time services. The parameters underlying Li-Fi and Wi-Fi AP MAC protocols can be configured by the proposed SDN scheme to support dynamic and granular services provisioning to end-users.