FDLA: A Novel Frequency Diversity and Link Aggregation Solution for Handover in an Indoor Vehicular VLC Network

Elnaz Alizadeh Jarchlo (1) , Elizabeth Eso (2) , Hossein Doroud (1) , Anatolij Zubow (1) , Falko Dressler (1) , Zabih Ghassemlooy (2) , Bernhard Siessegger (3) , Giuseppe Caire (1)

1 TU - Technical University of Berlin / Technische Universität Berlin
2 University of Northumbria at Newcastle [United Kingdom]
3 OSRAM

Visible light communications (VLC) (VLC) has been introduced as a complementary wireless technology that can be widely used in industrial indoor environments where automated guided vehicles aim to ease and accelerate logistics. Despite its advantages, there is one significant drawback of using an indoor vehicular VLC (V-VLC) network that is there is a high handover outage duration. In line-of-sight VLC links, such handovers are frequently due to mobility, shadowing, and obstacles. In this paper, we propose a frequency diversity and link aggregation solution, which is a novel technique in Data link layer to tackle handover challenge in indoor V-VLC networks. We have developed a smallscale prototype and experimentally evaluated its performance for a variety of scenarios and compared the results with other handover techniques. We also assessed the configuration options in more detail, in particular focusing on different network traffic types and various address resolution protocol intervals. The measurement results demonstrate the advantages of our approach for lowoutage duration handovers in V-VLC. The proposed idea is able to decrease the handover outage duration in a two-dimensional network to about 0.2 s, which is considerably lower compared to previous solutions.

Mots clés: Visible Light Communication; Handover; Outage Duration; Link Aggregation; Frequency Diversity; Visible Light Sensors; VLC Data Link Layer

Domaines: Optique / photonique

Elnaz Alizadeh Jarchlo, Elizabeth Eso, Hossein Doroud, Anatolij Zubow, Falko Dressler, et al.. FDLA: A Novel Frequency Diversity and Link Aggregation Solution for Handover in an Indoor Vehicular VLC Network. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 2021, 18 (3), pp.3556-3566. ⟨10.1109/TNSM.2021.3075476⟩. ⟨hal-03341377⟩