On Optimizing VLC Networks for Downlink Multi-User Transmission: A Survey

Mohanad Obeed, Anas M. Salhab, Mohamed Slim Alouini, Salam A. Zummo*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

190 Scopus citations

Abstract

The evolving explosion in high data rate services and applications will soon require the use of untapped, abundant unregulated spectrum of the visible light for communications to adequately meet the demands of the fifth-generation (5G) mobile technologies. Radio-frequency (RF) networks are proving to be too scarce to cover the escalation in data rate services. Visible light communication (VLC) has emerged as a great potential solution, either in replacement of, or a complement to, existing RF networks, to support the projected traffic demands. Despite the prolific advantages of VLC networks, VLC faces many challenges that must be resolved in the near future to achieve full standardization and to be integrated to future wireless systems. Here, we review the emerging research in the field of VLC networks and lay out the challenges, technological solutions, and future work predictions. Specifically, we first review the VLC channel capacity derivation and discuss the performance metrics and the associated variables. The optimization of VLC networks are also discussed, including resources and power allocation techniques, user-to-access point (AP) association and APs-to-clustered-users-association, APs coordination techniques, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) VLC networks, simultaneous energy harvesting and information transmission using the visible light, and the security issues in VLC networks. Finally, we propose several open research problems to optimize the various VLC networks by maximizing either the sum rate, fairness, energy efficiency, secrecy rate, or harvested energy.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8669813
Pages (from-to)2947-2976
Number of pages30
JournalIEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
Volume21
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jul 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 1998-2012 IEEE.

Keywords

  • Visible light communication
  • energy harvesting
  • hybrid VLC/RF networks
  • load balancing
  • non-orthogonal multiple access
  • physical layer security

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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