Infrastructure-to-Vehicle Visible Light Communications: Channel Modelling and Performance Analysis

Visible light communication (VLC) has emerged as a potential wireless connectivity solution for infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communications. In this paper, we investigate the performance of I2V VLC systems with access points in the form of streetlights. Particularly, we consider a typical two-lane highway road where the light poles are located at both roadsides and uniformly separated from each other. Based on non-sequential ray tracing simulations, we first propose a closed-form path loss expression as a function of transceiver and infrastructure parameters. Then, we statistically analyze the path loss and derive a closed-form expression for its probability distribution function (PDF). Utilizing the derived PDF, we derive an approximate closed-form bit error rate (BER) expression. We confirm the accuracy of derived BER expression through comparison with Monte Carlo simulation results and demonstrate the effect of transceiver and infrastructure parameters such as receiver aperture, pole height, car height, lateral shift, and spacing between light poles on the BER performance.