Effects of vehicle exhaust to VLC link: measurement and analysis

Optical beam propagation through the turbulent media such as the vehicle exhaust plumes need to be studied in order to estimate the communication performance degradations on vehicular visible light communication (V 2 LC) networks. When the optical transceiver is close to the exhaust plumes, the optical waves may be distorted in both phase and amplitude, by perturbations on the air's refractive index spatially and temporally. In this paper, the authors present the measurements performed on V 2 LC communication link using two different vehicles. In particular, several different transceiver configurations with respect to the position of exhaust nozzle have been tested and compared, and the turbulence strength is evaluated by scintillation index (SI). Since the V 2 LC applications are mainly based on intensity modulated, direct detection method, only the receiving optical power fluctuation (scintillation) will be discussed. Finally, the error rate performance under different log intensity variances is analyzed, demonstrating that scintillation effects introduced by the vehicle exhaust can be negligible in V 2 LC applications.