Dynamic dwell timer for vertical handover in VLC-WLAN heterogeneous networks

The visible light communication (VLC) and wireless LAN (WLAN) heterogeneous network is considered as a highly competitive candidate for the next generation indoor wireless communication. VLC can provide high data rate as downlink mechanism while WLAN supports reliable connectivity and covers uplink needs. In such heterogeneous systems, vertical handover (VHO) is critical for the system reliability and performance. This paper proposes an improved design of the dwell timer used in VHO process by introducing a dynamic dwell timer based on prediction. Simulation results show that the proposed design outperforms benchmark designs by avoiding unwise handovers while achieving a longer connection time and higher average data rate. Simulations also prove that the proposed design is applicable to different environments and user behaviors.