LED location beacon system based on processing of digital images

This paper is in the field of vehicle positioning technology for the intelligent transportation systems. The ideas of an innovative light-emitting diode (LED)-based location beacon system are developed and verified. The system developed is a combination of several latest technologies which include a CMOS vision sensor, high brightness LED, and digital image processing techniques. It belongs to a new kind of simplex communication link. A digital camera is used to capture images contained in the LED beacon signal. The captured digital images are processed by the algorithms developed and a location code is extracted. The location code can be used for calibration of a vehicle positioning system which may consist of a GPS, inertial navigation system (INS) and other sensors. The issues examined include the structure of the transmitter and the receiver, the signaling method, the transmission protocol of the LED panel, the relationship between the camera capturing rate and the LED pattern update rate, the digital camera exposure technology, and the efficiency of the image processing algorithms. Experiments using a prototype transmitter and a receiver were performed. The experimental results provide a good demonstration of the viability of the ideas and methodologies developed.