SVM-based Network Access Type Decision in Hybrid LiFi and WiFi Networks

In indoor environment, a hybrid network consisting of light fidelity (LiFi) and wireless fidelity (WiFi) is capable of retaining both the high-speed data transmission and the ubiquitous coverage, where the network access type of users can be optimized to improve the performance. Since visible light communication mainly depends on the line-of-sight (LoS) transmission, it is susceptible to channel blockage, which should be considered by users to select the appropriate type of network access. In the existing literature, LiFi channel blockage parameters are regarded as known for users to determine the access type. However, in practical scenarios, the estimation of blockage parameters lags behind their variations, and users can not get the real-time blockage information. In this paper, a support-vector-machine-based (SVM-based) network access type decision scheme is proposed in hybrid LiFi and WiFi networks. By taking the correlation of blockage parameters between adjacent periods into account, SVM is adopted to achieve high equivalent data rate when accurate blockage parameters are unknown. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the considered benchmarks under different scenarios in terms of the equivalent data rate performance.