An Interference to Noise Ratio Handover mechanism for Mobile Visible Light Communication Networks

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is recognized as a complement communication technology that meets many hurdles of Radio Frequency (RF) systems. For example, VLC overcomes the limited RF spectrum resources for mobile users, even though its application demands an effective mechanism to handover among the different devices, in order to keep the connectivity consistent. In this paper, a new handover mechanism is introduced for mobile VLC nodes, based on a real time evaluation of the Interference-to-Noise Ratio (INR). This mechanism is coupled with four adaptive modulation schemes to further enhance the data rate. The communication system is evaluated at 0.15 mps and 0.3 mps velocities for different parameters i.e., handover rate, delivered data per handover and handover delay ratio, through an extensive simulated campaign. An experimental validation carried out through software-defined approach, considering a small-scale scenario and low power Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). A perfect results alignment between simulation and measurement show how suggested INR-based mechanism overcomes classical SNR-based handover for all performance parameters evaluated in this study.