Experimental investigation of the ambient light effects on V2V optical camera communication systems

Optical camera communications (OCC) technology has many valuable indoor and outdoor applications. One of the most important challenges of this technology is ambient light interference, in outdoor and indoor applications. This challenge has not been investigated sufficiently. This paper presents an experimental investigation of OCC vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications in indoor and outdoor environments under different conditions. The system comprises a light-emitting diode (LED)-based taillight and a camera used as the transmitter and the receiver, respectively. Link length and ambient light intensity are considered effective parameters to evaluate the performance of the OCC system. The impact of outdoor ambient light, considering the sun's elevation angle, on the system performance using a receiver with an adaptive threshold is investigated. Experimental results for the proposed system demonstrate an error-free indoor data transmission length of up to 65 m with normal ambient light and it extends up to 500 m of outdoor communication at night with very low ambient light. Furthermore, outdoor communication scenarios in east-west and north-south directions have been done at different times of the day in 35 m link length to examine the effect of the sun's elevation angle on system performance. The results show better performance on the north-south link compared to the east-west link.