Deeply Integrating Visible Light and Radio Communication for Ultra-High Reliable Platooning

Platooning is one of the most promising Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) applications, which is set to reduce the negative aspects of road traffic, by improving safety, fuel efficiency, and road efficiency. Reliable data communication is the key to such applications, besides better and smarter local sensors (e.g., radar or video). Current platooning solutions primarily build upon vehicular networking technologies such as Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) and cellular V2X. However, high communication reliability is still a concern, particularly with high vehicle densities due to increasing interference levels. In order to alleviate this, the use of Visible Light Communication (VLC) instead of, or in addition to Radio Frequency (RF), has been proposed. We explore the capabilities of RF and VLC based communication protocols for platooning with a strong focus on reliability. Additionally, we propose and explore heterogeneous solutions using RF and VLC together complementing each other. By means of extensive simulations, we analyze the performance of all these solutions. Based on realistic simulation models, we show that significant improvements in terms of reliability can be achieved by integrating VLC. In this initial study, we also show that deeply integrated heterogeneous communication with RF and VLC can bring platooning one step closer to large-scale real-world deployment.