A New Automotive VLC System Using Optical Communication Image Sensor

As a new technology for next-generation vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, visible-light communication (VLC) using light-emitting diode (LED) transmitters and camera receivers has been energetically studied. Toward the future in which vehicles are connected anytime and anywhere by optical signals, the cutting-edge camera receiver employing a special CMOS image sensor, i.e., the optical communication image sensor (OCI), has been prototyped, and an optical V2V communication system applying this OCI-based camera receiver has already demonstrated 10-Mb/s optical signal transmission between real vehicles during outside driving. In this paper, to reach a transmission performance of 54 Mb/s, which is standardized as the maximum data rate in IEEE 802.11p for V2X communication, a more advanced OCI-based automotive VLC system is described. By introducing optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (optical-OFDM), the new system achieves a more than fivefold higher data rate. Additionally, the frequency response characteristics and circuit noise of the OCI are closely analyzed and taken into account in the signal design. Furthermore, the forward-current limitation of an actual LED is also considered for long operational reliability, i.e., the LED is not operated in overdrive. Bit-error-rate experiments verify a system performance of 45 Mb/s without bit errors and 55 Mb/s with BER < 10(-5).