Visible light communication-based wireless technology for vehicular communications

Abstract

The recent experimental efforts have demonstrated the feasibility of visible light com- munication (VLC) technology in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Vehicular VLC is based on the idea of modulating the light intensity of the light emitting-diodes (LEDs) to transmit information and enables the dual use of exterior automotive and road- side infrastructure lighting for both illumination and communication purposes. However, vehicular VLC technology is still new, which requires further research efforts in many respects. As an example, most works which focus on the modeling of VLC channels are built on the characteristics of the indoor environment. For the vehicular communication, special attention should be devoted to the vehicular mobility, vehicular intensity profile characteristics, as well as to the outdoor atmospheric weather conditions. A new key concept to enable efficient connectivity in vehicular VLC is that the intermediate vehicles can act as relay nodes to receive the signal from the source vehicle and re-transmit it to the destination one. Since the vehicular connectivity is mainly based on the wireless access, the vehicular applications might be limited by the finite battery capacity of the involved devices. This prompts another new key concept named by energy harvesting (EH) systems, which refers to harnessing energy from the environment or other sources and converting it to electrical energy. Thus, the lifetime of energy-constrained vehicular wireless networks can be prolonged, which also offers a promising solution for energy- sustainability of wireless relay nodes. Additionally, Physical layer security (PLS), and Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) play a vital role in enhancing the security and reliability of V-VLC systems. Therefore, the overall operational expenses will be reduced. The objective of this study is then investigating the performance of the vehicular VLC systems and giving insight on how the connectivity can be maintained in different vehic- ular scenarios. The impact of enabling the EH systems in the connected vehicles will be further addressed.