QoE-Driven Optimized Load Balancing Design for Hybrid LiFi and WiFi Networks

The hybrid light fidelity (LiFi) and wireless fidelity (WiFi) networks are regarded as a promising solution for future indoor wireless communication. In this letter, we investigate the traffic load balancing (LB) issue for this hybrid networks. In our design, considering that user terminals (UTs) may have different data rate demands, we utilize the complementary advantages of the wide bandwidth of the LiFi network and the wide coverage area of the WiFi network to serve the UTs. With considerations of the access point heterogeneity and UTs’ quality of experience (QoE) demands for data rate, we then formulate the LB issue as a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem with the aim of maximizing the system throughput under proportional fairness constraints, and propose a distributed optimal algorithm and a simplified suboptimal sequential algorithm to solve it. Simulation results demonstrate that using the presented QoE-driving LB scheme, more UTs are served with higher QoE while maintaining high system throughput and proportional fairness.