Vehicular Visible Light Communications

Abstract

—Lightning modules based on light emitting diodes (LEDs) have become increasingly popular in the automotive industry, consequently visible light communication (VLC) has emerged as a serious candidate for Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC). As a new technology, VLC has a lot of intrinsic advantages, but the technology is too immature for us to conclude. It has a huge unlicensed spectrum which if combined with existing RF-based communication technologies provides inter-spectrum heterogeneity and opens up the path for various vehicular networking applications. However, there are a lot of open questions which need to be addressed before we can discuss potential application scenarios. For one, the need for a sound Vehicular VLC (V2LC) simulation model is evident in the community. To develop one such, I plan to investigate the channel properties of V2LC via multiple empirical studies and reflect the insights to the model iteratively. Modeling the effects of mobility, interference, shadowing and environmental factors are some of the goals. The end results should be a simulation model which will support inter-spectrum heterogeneity and will enable the study of higher level topics, such as enabling the coexistence of VLC and RF technologies, the quest for V2LC's killer application, etc.