An End-to-End Experimental Software-Defined LiFi and Wi-Fi Networks Integration Platform

A wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) access point (AP) can provide signal coverage for light blocked users moving around light fidelity (LiFi) APs, while these can enhance the data rate transmission coverage of Wi-Fi APs. An experimental software-defined LiFi and Wi-Fi networks integration testbed has been developed to experimentally validate software-defined networking (SDN)-based user mobility and traffic load engineering algorithms, as well as, support the SDN applications development. A LiFi access and traffic engineering application has been developed to provide network monitoring and management, user mobility, and network load balancing services. The developed platform is also incorporated into a cloud network as a service testbed to support remote experimentation activities. It allocates in an elastic manner the different networking, computing, and storage resources according to the experimenter demands, which can be programmed based on experiment time cycles.