Prediction based approach to handover mechanism for hybrid optical wireless networks utilizing narrow beams
M.S. Barik (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Q. Wang – Mentor (TU Delft - EEMS - General)
Haibin Zhang – Mentor (TNO)
Remco Litjens – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Network Architectures and Services)
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Abstract
This thesis presents mobility-aware handover mechanisms for hybrid radio frequency (RF) and narrow-beam optical wireless communication (NB-OWC) networks in indoor environments. Reactive handover mechanisms, commonly used in existing system such as Wi-Fi or hybrid Li-Fi and Wi-Fi networks HLWNets, are shown to be inadequate in ultra-dense NB-OWC deployments due to the limited coverage area per beam. To address these limitations, three novel handover mechanisms—one reactive and two predictive—were developed and evaluated against a baseline reactive mechanism from the literature. A simulation framework assessed performance across a range of user speeds, using average throughput, lower-bound throughput, and handover rate as key metrics. The predictive mechanisms demonstrated significant improvements over reactive approaches, with the predictive throughput mechanism achieving a 157% increase in average throughput compared to the baseline. A trade-off between average and lower-bound throughput was observed, and a strong correlation between handover rate and throughput was identified. These results demonstrate that prediction-based handover strategies can substantially enhance user experience and network efficiency in hybrid RF/NB-OWC systems, particularly under moderate mobility, and provide a foundation for exploring multi-user and more realistic deployment scenarios.