Toward Environmental-Adaptive Visible Light Communications Receivers for Automotive Applications: A Review

Since more and more vehicles are using the transportation infrastructure, the safety and the efficiency of roads are of absolute importance. A solution to enhance the security of road transportation is by enabling wireless communications between vehicles and also with the traffic infrastructures (e.g., traffic lights, street lighting, or traffic signs). In this area, visible light communications (VLC) is considered of great perspective. A fundamental problematic in vehicular VLC is the design of a proper sensor capable to support long distance communications in dynamic traffic situations and in unfriendly atmospheric conditions. Therefore, this paper is focused on the design of the VLC sensors intended for vehicular communication applications, offering a review of the solutions found to mitigate the effect of the problematic conditions. Furthermore, this paper summarizes these solutions and proposes an environmental adaptive VLC receiver that would be capable to optimally adjust its settings in order to maximize the communication efficiency, but without affecting the communication robustness to noise.