Experimental Observations on the Feasibility of VLC-Based V2X Communications under various Environmental Deterrents

Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) using Visible Light Communication (VLC) channels can be seen as an economically viable option to replace the existing modes of vehicular communications in the near future. In this paper, we have analyzed the performance of VLC based V2X communication under various environmental deterrents viz. Light Fog, Dense Fog, Light Smoke and Dense Smoke using a proof-of-concept testbed. A series of experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of environmental deterrents over VLC based Line-of-Sight as well as non-Line-of Sight V2X transmission with respect to distance and angular variations. On-Off-keying (OOK) modulation has been selected as the modulation scheme, as defined in VLC standard (IEEE 802.15.7) for the transmission of information bits between a transmitter LED and a photo-diode receiver. The experimental results show the feasibility of VLC-based V2X systems with reliable data transmission under different environmental deterrents with a fairly good signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), even under dense-fog and smoke conditions where the attenuation in average optical power at the receiver, is quite high.

I. Introduction

Visible Light Communications (VLC) [1], [2] use the luminance of LEDs for optical wireless data communication. White light LEDs are favorable in many promising ways like long lifetime, high brightness, and lower power consumption. In recent years, VLCs utilizing white LEDs have been explored as a means of improving short-range wireless communications. Visible Light Communications are highly secure and offer a vast unlicensed free frequency spectrum usage. Moreover, they are proven to be harmless to the human body.