What is it about?

Radio frequency communication provides mobility and broad coverage, while visible-light communication can provide very high data rates using light sources that may already be present for illumination. Neither technology is ideal by itself. This survey brings together the research on hybrid radio frequency and visible-light networks and examines how the two technologies can complement each other. It reviews network architectures, resource allocation, handover and load balancing, performance-analysis methods, applications, practical implementations and major research challenges.

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Why is it important?

Research on hybrid radio and visible-light networks had developed across many different architectures, optimization methods and applications. This work provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how these pieces fit together and, importantly, shows that there is no single best hybrid architecture. The appropriate topology, handover strategy, access method and resource allocation depend on the particular application and available resources. Hybrid operation can improve mobility, reliability, capacity, delay, security and energy efficiency while reducing radio-frequency interference.

Perspectives

Hybrid radio and visible-light systems can evolve toward intelligent networks that automatically decide when and how to use radio or light according to users, interference, traffic and environmental conditions. Promising directions identified in the survey include improved energy efficiency, new optimization methods, software-defined-radio implementations, machine-learning-based spectrum selection and new applications in vehicles, hospitals, airports, the Internet of Things and sensing.

Assist. Prof. Mohammed Elamassie
Ozyegin Universitesi

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Hybrid RF/VLC Systems: A Comprehensive Survey on Network Topologies, Performance Analyses, Applications, and Future Directions, IEEE Access, January 2021, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
DOI: 10.1109/access.2021.3129154.
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