A Hybrid VLC/RF Parking Automation System

Abstract

This paper proposes an innovative and integrated parking automation system based on visible light communication (VLC) and radio frequency (RF) wireless technologies. The VLC and RF are used for vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, infrastructure-to-vehicle communication, indoor localization, and wireless mesh networks. For VLC we have utilized the vehicle's headlight and parking COB bulb-based VLC transmitters and optical receivers that are installed on the parking gate barrier and the roof of the vehicle. Digital pulse interval modulation (DPIM) is used as an anisochronous modulation scheme in VLC-based transactions. The client-server interface and parking's central processing unit are implemented using the ParkLight software package consisting of an Android, Django, and LabVIEW PC-based applications. We have introduced a VLC-based two-factor authentication and a charging payment system for installation at the gate barrier. An experimental evaluation of the proposed system is conducted under both day and night conditions in terms of optical interference cancellation, angular displacement, and the transmission link range. In addition, the VLC-based positioning system is practically evaluated under different LEDs' semiangle at half-power. The proposed system is successfully demonstrated by achieving a bit error rate (BER) of less than 10-4 over a 5 m link range, and an average positioning error lower than 0.7 m for vehicles.