Vehicular Visible Light Networks for Urban Mobile Crowd Sensing

Masini, Barbara; Bazzi, Alessandro; Zanella, Alberto · 2018 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3390/s18041177

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Summary

This paper investigates the integration of Visible Light Communication (VLC) into vehicular networks to enhance urban mobile crowd sensing applications. As vehicles become equipped with numerous sensors and onboard units, the efficient transmission of collected data to roadside units (RSUs) is critical. While Radio Frequency (RF) technologies like IEEE 802.11p and Cellular-V2X are standard, they face congestion issues in dense urban environments. The authors propose VLC as a complementary, low-cost technology that leverages existing LED infrastructure in vehicles and traffic lights. The study aims to evaluate whether VLC can improve data delivery rates compared to RF-only systems and determine the impact of RSU density, positioning, and receiver field of view (FOV) on network performance. The research employs a realistic simulation framework combining VISSIM for microscopic traffic modeling and SHINE for heterogeneous network protocol simulation. The scenario is based on a 2.88 km² area of Bologna, Italy, featuring fluent and congested traffic conditions with 455 and 670 vehicles, respectively. Vehicles generate 100-byte packets containing sensor data, which are routed to RSUs using greedy forwarding algorithms. The study compares four communication strategies: VLC only, DSRC (IEEE 802.11p) only, VLC-first (prioritizing VLC to offload DSRC), and DSRC-first. RSUs are configured in various setups, ranging from a single intersection to 23 intersections, equipped with either VLC, DSRC, or both. VLC parameters follow IEEE 802.15.7 standards, testing data rates of 266.6 kb/s and 10 Mb/s, with receiver FOVs of 30° or 60°. Results indicate that VLC significantly improves data delivery rates, particularly in congested scenarios where RF networks suffer from packet collisions. In dense traffic, the "VLC-first" strategy outperformed DSRC-only and DSRC-first approaches, demonstrating VLC’s ability to offload RF congestion. The study found that increasing the number of RSUs from one to 23 substantially boosted delivery rates for both technologies, but the relative advantage of VLC remained consistent. Furthermore, wider receiver FOVs (60° vs. 30°) increased connectivity opportunities but also introduced more interference, slightly reducing performance gains. The higher data rate of 10 Mb/s for VLC provided superior delivery rates compared to the standard 266.6 kb/s, highlighting the potential of future high-speed VLC implementations. The findings suggest that VLC is a viable complementary technology for vehicular networks, offering high spatial reuse and reduced interference compared to RF. By integrating VLC with existing LED infrastructure, cities can enhance crowd sensing capabilities without significant new deployment costs. The study concludes that hybrid networks utilizing both VLC and IEEE 802.11p provide robust performance, especially in dense urban environments, supporting the development of automated and connected vehicle ecosystems.

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• v2x connected vehicle