Abstract
The use of Visible Light Communications (VLC) in vehicular applications has become a major research area due to its simplicity, high performance to cost ratio, and great deployment potential. In this context, this article provides one of the very few analyses and experimental evaluations concerning the integration of a light dimming function in vehicular VLC systems. For this purpose, a vehicle-to-vehicle VLC prototype has been implemented and used to evaluate the systems’ communication performances in light dimming conditions, while decreasing the duty cycle from 40% to 1%, and increasing the communication range from 1 to 40–50 m. The experimental results showed that in normal lighting conditions, the VLC technology can easily support low duty cycle light dimming for ranges up to 40 m, while maintaining a 10−6 BER. Nevertheless, in strong optical noise conditions, when the system reaches its SNR limit, the communication range can decrease by half, whereas the BER can increase by 2–4 orders of magnitude. This article provides consistent evidence concerning the high potential of the VLC technology to support inter-vehicle communication links, even in light dimming conditions.
Highlights
Mobility is fundamental for most human activities; the safety of the transportation system is a stringent research topic for the automotive industry, for vehicle manufacturers, and for the academic community
The front stage is responsible for the optical signal collection and primary this case, as the Visible Light Communications (VLC) emitter is based on a set of red rear lights, the optical filter only allows conditioning of the optical signal, the signal conditioning stage is responsible for the the passage of 600–680 nm signals
The objective of the experimental procedure is to evaluate the effect of light dimming on the performances of a vehicular VLC system
Summary
Mobility is fundamental for most human activities; the safety of the transportation system is a stringent research topic for the automotive industry, for vehicle manufacturers, and for the academic community. Intelligent systems implemented in cars and transport infrastructures are widespread, providing innovative services in terms of safety [1] Increasing concern in this area has led to the implementation of new concepts, which incorporate state-of-the-art wireless communications technologies that enable smart vehicles to share information with other vehicles and with the transportation network, in order to limit the risk of accidents [2,3,4,5] and to improve the efficiency of road transportation. Being superior to incandescent bulbs and fluorescent tubes in terms of efficiency, life term expectancy, and high tolerance to humidity, LEDs are on the way to becoming the new normal in lighting [6,7] Their market share is gradually increasing, as LEDs are replacing other lighting solutions in home settings and in vehicle lighting systems and in transportation lighting infrastructures (see Figure 1). There are currently many LED light sources as part of the road infrastructure and of the vehicle lighting systems, so VLC technology is easier to implement [5], while providing many advantages, such as low latencies [10,11], and being complementarity to 802.11p RF-based technology [15], where the VLC technology can counteract most common vulnerabilities associated with RF intheir fast-switching
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