Delay-aware Wireless Resource Allocation and User Association in LiFi-WiFi Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract

The ever-growing wireless networks demand high capacity, have strict latency requirements, and must support diverse communication services. A LiFi-WiFi heterogeneous network has proven to be a useful tool to satisfy the growing capacity demand. However, to leverage these co-existing, non-interfering technologies, intelligent resource management schemes have to be developed. To support diverse applications with varying delay and data rate requirements, the resource management scheme should consider the Quality of Service (QoS) while allocating wireless resources. In this work, the downlink wireless resources are allocated to users such that the average network packet delay is minimized. Users that are both capable and not capable of multi-homing are considered and a separate optimization problem is formulated for each case. These problems are then solved using a global Branch and Bound-based solver and a genetic algorithm-based Metaheuristic is also proposed. The algorithms are then evaluated with simulations and the results show that the average network packet delay is significantly lowered and each user's strict QoS requirements are satisfied even in a network with heavy traffic flow.