Hybrid Radio and Visible Light Communications in Inter-Vehicle Communication

Abstract

We firstly propose a hybrid-Radio-and-Visible-Light-Communication (HR-VLC) system in Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) employing Spread-Spectrum (SS) for better ranging and larger capacity. IVC, a key in Intelligent Transport System (ITS), is intended to improve the better safety and more convenient user experience. In the IVC, Radio communications system may not guarantee the precise ranging and large capacity. Thanks to the VLC with a good directionality and ubiquitous LEDs, a HR-VLC will support a reliable and better ranging system for IVC. Furthermore, the utilization of SS helps reduce the interference of ambient light proportionally to the processing gain. In the HR-VLC in IVC system, PPM is used as a modulation scheme due to high average power efficiency. It is verified that the proposed system achieves better BER performance and more precise ranging.