Joint Power Allocation and Cell Formation for Energy-Efficient VLC Networks

In this paper, we propose a joint cell formation and power allocation algorithms for energy efficiency (EE) maximization in visible light communication (VLC) networks. Unlike the previous works, we show that the cell formation and power allocation are interlinked problems and they should be solved jointly. We start by proposing a new algorithm for users clustering and then associating all the access points (APs) to the clustered users based on a proposed metric. Under the assumption that the vectored transmission is applied at each formed cell, we solve an optimization problem that aims to maximize the EE by allocating the powers for the users with quality of service (QoS) constraints. Then, we propose an algorithm that jointly allocates the power and decides which APs must participate in communication and which ones must be switched off. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms significantly improve the EE compared to the traditional methods and algorithms.