Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Visible Light Communications: Channel Modelling and Capacity Calculations

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a visible light communication (VLC) system for vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connectivity. Two headlamps of the vehicle serve as wireless transmitters while photodetectors located within the traffic light pole act as wireless receivers. We use non-sequential ray-tracing approach to obtain optical channel impulse responses (CIRs) for the V2I scenario under consideration assuming different positions of the vehicle within the road. Based on the CIRs to model propagation environment as well as the effects of LED non-linear characteristics, we calculate the achievable signal-to-noise ratio and achievable data rates for VLC-based V2I systems.