Free space optical communication in the visible bandwidth for V2V safety critical protocols

Vehicular Communication Systems are an emerging type of networks in which vehicles and roadside units are the communicating nodes, providing each other with information, such as safety warnings and traffic information. Vehicle-to-vehicle message exchange is considered the preferred pattern for safety-critical communication (e.g. in anti-collision active systems). Recently, LED-based optical wireless communication has been also proposed for car to car message delivery. This option turns to be particularly effective in short range direct communications to exploit its line-of-sight feature and overcome the issues related to the isotropic nature of radio waves. In this paper we experimentally address this case study making use of two low cost On-Board Unit prototypes, equipped with a common Light Emitting Diode (LED) component at the transmitter and a common PIN photodiode at the receiver.