Automotive Visible-Light Communication: Alternative Devices and Systems

Continuous advancements in visible-light communication (VLC) technology have paved the way for future high-capacity communication links that can simultaneously provide data transmission and illumination. VLC is being accepted as a potential complementary technology in 5G networks, and standardization efforts through IEEE 802.15.7 are on their way. Today, vehicular networking applications have become increasingly complex with tight power and performance requirements. Consequently, devices and systems that can meet diverse vehicular networking applications are in great demand. In this article, we discuss three alternatives for vehicular networking applications in (1) LED-photodiode-based active VLC, (2) VLC with a multicamera array receiver, and (3) passive VLC based on decoding information from optical backscatter. We also present our recent experimental and modeling work using our camera-based and passive VLC prototype implementations.