Resource Allocation for Parallel Links in Hybrid WiFi/VLC Systems

Due to the high demand for wireless data transmission recently, hybrid systems have been proposed to satisfy that demand. Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising approach due to many advantages such as high capacity, operating at an unregulated frequency band, and low power consumption. We propose a new hybrid system that simultaneously transmits data over two parallel links: RF and VLC. The uplink is set to be only RF while the downlink is a combination of two independent systems that transmit data in parallel without interference. The proposed system can offload users from one system to another to ensure achieving either a maximum or fair data rate over the users. The proposed model tested better than stand-alone WiFi, and two other hybrid systems. Simulations showed that it has the best performance in term of either maximizing the minimum data rate or maximizing the average data rate.