Enabling vehicular visible light communication (V2LC) networks

Abstract

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a fast-growing technology to provide data communication using low-cost and omni-present LEDs and photodiodes. In this paper, we examine the key proper-ties in enabling vehicular VLC (V2LC) networks as follows. We first develop a custom V2LC research platform on which we expe-rimentally evaluate the feasibility of a V2LC system under working conditions in relation to link resilience to visible light noise and interference. Our experiments show that a receiver's narrow field-of-view angle makes V2LC resilient to visible light noise from sunlight and legacy lighting sources as well as to interference from active VLC transmitters. Then, by leveraging our experimental characterization as the basis of modifications to our simulator, we examine V2LC's performance in providing network services for vehicular applications. Our key findings include: (i) in dense vehicular traffic conditions (e.g., urban highway during peak hours), V2LC takes advantage of multiple available paths to reach vehicles and overcomes the effects of packet collisions; (ii) in the presence of a visible light blockage in traffic, V2LC can still have a significant number of successful transmissions by opportunistically using dynamic inter-vehicle gaps.