In-Vehicle Visible Light Communications Data Transmission System Using Optical Fiber Distributed Light: Implementation and Experimental Evaluation

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 22; no. 18; p. 6738
• Main Authors: Beguni, Cătălin, Căilean, Alin-Mihai, Avătămăniței, Sebastian-Andrei, Zadobrischi, Eduard, Stoler, Raul, Dimian, Mihai, Popa, Valentin, Béchadergue, Bastien, Chassagne, Luc
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 06-09-2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Communications systems; Data transmission; Design; Emitters; Engineering Sciences; Equipment and supplies; Fiber optics; in-car communications; in-vehicle communications; Light emitting diodes; Lighting systems; optical communications; optical fiber distributed light; Optical fibers; Optical wireless; Technology; Traffic congestion; traffic safety; visible light communication; Wireless access points; Wireless communications; Romania; in-car communications; in-vehicle communications; optical fiber distributed light; optical communications; visible light communication; traffic safety; wireless optical communications
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s22186738

Visible light communications emerges as a promising wireless communication technology that has been found suitable for numerous indoor and outdoor applications. In this article, a new in-vehicle VLC system is designed, implemented, and experimentally evaluated. The purpose of this new system is to provide car passengers with optical wireless communications. The proposed system consists of a VLC emitter integrated into the vehicle’s ambient lighting system and a mobile VLC receiver. Unlike any previous works, this article proposes a VLC emitter in which the light from a 3 W LED is distributed on a 2 square meter surface using 500 optical fibers whose main purpose is a decorative one. The proposed prototype has been implemented on a car and evaluated in relevant working conditions. The experimental evaluation of the proposed system has demonstrated the viability of the proposed concept and showed a data rate of 250 kb/s while providing a BER lower than 10−7. As far as we know, the proposed concept is totally new in the VLC literature, opening a new area of utilization for VLC technology: using VLC with optical fiber distributed light.