Visible Light inter-vehicle Communication for platooning of autonomous vehicles

In this paper, we study a use of Visible Light Communication (VLC) technology for a platoon of autonomous vehicles. We present a low-cost, low-latency and simple outdoor VLC prototype, which can be installed as a vehicular tail-lighting system. The architecture of our VLC system is introduced, followed by performance evaluation with an especial attention on the VLC link resilience to ambient noise and communication range. Through the experiments, we observe that a use of proper optical filter stage at the receiver side, together with narrowing the transmitter Field-of-view (FOV), result in an extended communication range and make the VLC system more resilient to the ambient noises. Experimental results show that the system can provide 30 meters of inter-vehicle communication with 36 ms of latency, yet on sunny day conditions. The benefit of using the VLC system for platooning control is showed using a Simulink system that integrates our VLC platform for inter-communications to simulates the performance of autonomous vehicles platoon.