Handover Skipping for LiFi

Abstract

This paper studies handover skipping, which enables handovers between two non-adjacent access points (APs), in light fidelity (LiFi) networks. LiFi is an emerging wireless communication technology, which operates in a way similar to wireless fidelity (WiFi) but uses light waves as a medium. Compared with WiFi, LiFi has a relatively shorter range with a single AP. This could possibly cause more frequent handovers, and thus, handover skipping techniques are required. Conventional handover skipping methods rely on information about the user's trajectory, which is not ready to use at the AP. In this paper, a novel handover skipping scheme based on the reference signal received power (RSRP) is proposed. The new approach combines the value of RSRP and its rate of change to determine the handover target. Since RSRP is already used in the current handover schemes, the proposed method does not require additional feedback. The results show that compared with the standard handover scheme and the conventional handover skipping method, the proposed method can reduce handover rate by up to 29% and 17% and improve throughput by up to 66% and 26%, respectively.