QoE-Based Handover Scheme for Indoor VLC-WiFi Heterogeneous Systems

For the network selection problem in heterogeneous networks consist of Visible Light Communication (VLC) and WiFi, most of the existing studies only focus on the optimization of physical network indicators, such as SINR and throughput, while ignoring the demand and service experience of users. Therefore, this paper presents a network switching algorithm based on user quality of experience (QoE). In the algorithm, the discrete QoE level model is firstly set up based on the Mean Opinion Score(MOS), and then the corresponding network handover criterion is given according to the actual QoE level of different network. The handover scheme is performed if and only the new network makes the user QoE level improve, thus reducing network switching cost by the bind pursuit of higher data rate. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the overall number of network handoffs while maintain the QoE level, thus reducing the network cost and improving the network performance.