Performance analysis of a car-to-car visible light ommunication system

This paper presents an analytical performance analysis of a car-to-car visible light communications system under different communication geometries during the daytime. A market-weighted headlamp beam-pattern model, measured dirt effects on light distribution, and the road-surface reflection model are employed. We consider both the line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight links and outline the relationship between the communication range and the system bit error rate (BER) performance. Results show that the wet road surface can help to increase the received optical power and improve the BER performance above a certain distance, and the communications coverage range can reach up to 70 m at a data rate of 50 Mbps when a photodetector is mounted on the car at a height of 0-0.2 m above the road surface.