AEU - International Journal of Electronics and

Communications
Volume 136, July 2021, 153765

Regular paper

Design and implementation of VLC-based

smart barrier gate systems
Arash Rasti-Meymandi a, Ali Madahian a, Jamshid Abouei a , Ali Mirvakili a,
Zohreh HajiAkhondi-Meybodi b, Arash Mohammadi c, Murat Uysal d

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Highlights

• We demonstrate a VLC-based smart barrier gate concept in an

actual barrier gate.

• We provide a new approach to alleviate the optical and nearby

user's interference.

• We provide an operating region in terms of incident and

irradiance angles.
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 Abstract

In this paper, an innovative and smart Visible Light Communication (VLC)-based

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is designed. The proposed system uses
vehicle LED headlamps as a remote controller. Differential Pulse Position
Modulation (DPPM) is utilized for the sake of its asynchronicity. The system
features an innovative optical interference cancellation mechanism to address the
unwanted variable DC component and AC line noise in the received signal. The
feasibility of the proposed system is demonstrated experimentally in day and night
conditions using an off-the-shelf LED headlights. The Bit Error Rate (BER)
performance of the system in terms of angular position of the vehicle with respect
to the VLC receiver at different link ranges is evaluated. The prototype successfully
demonstrates the smart control over the barrier gate using the ATmega
microcontrollers family for the outdoor environment. BER of lower than

is achieved for a maximum link range of

meters.

Graphical abstract
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Introduction

Visible Light Communication (VLC) has been recognized as one of the modern
emerging technologies, which utilizes visible spectrum as a communication
medium [1], [2]. Some of the main features of this technology are high bandwidth,
unlicensed spectrum, and secured communication, which provide an attractive
solution for various applications with limited spectrum resources or security
problems [3]. Recently, there has been a significant growth in using Light-Emitting
Diode (LED) for luminance as an alternative system to the conventional
incandescent and fluorescent lamps due to its longer lifespan, lower power
consumption, and higher luminance efficiency. LEDs are capable of switching
between ON and OFF states in a much faster way than conventional lamps. For
instance, a typical LED has a rise/fall time in the order of a few nanoseconds, which
makes it possible to operate at the frequency of a few megahertzes. This
characteristic nominates LEDs as a good candidate for VLC systems [4], [5], [6].

Recently, more automobile manufacturers tend to use LED lamps for both
headlights and taillights of their products as they guarantee great visibility and
durability with lower cost. Thus, it would be efficient to use these LEDs for both
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 luminance and data transmission in VLC-based Intelligent Transportation Systems
(ITSs). ITS involves collecting information from sensors that are equipped within or
on vehicles and infrastructures in order to make the transportation system more
efficient, safe, and environment-friendly. Generally speaking, VLC-based ITS
applications have been categorized into Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication;
Infrastructure to Vehicle (I2V) communication, and; Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I)
communication [7]. The authors in [8] provide an overview of the emerging
research area in vehicular communication and a performance evaluation of a
typical V2V VLC-based system. In [9], a V2V system based on LED headlamp is
evaluated and experimentally demonstrated. In [10], a scheme of VLC system is
proposed and implemented in a demo version, which can adjust and control the
traffic light signal. This system is used for ensuring that trucks can pass through
the intersection without any emergency braking. In another possible VLC
application in ITS, Abuella et al. in [11] proposed an innovative speed estimation
system, which is called the Visible Light Detection and Ranging (ViLDAR). This
system estimates the vehicle speed based on the received optical power variations
at the photodetector and converting it to distance. Furthermore, in the case of the
vehicle positioning system, in [12] a VLC system based on V2V and V2I is proposed
in which using a camera sensor, the location information of the installed LED on
the infrastructure and the car tail lamp can be extracted. Although a wide variety
of VLC-based investigations has been published in the ITS field, there is a deficit in
research about barrier gate automation related to the VLC which is addressed in
this paper.

The authors in [13] proposed a VLC-based smart parking information system,

which helps drivers to access the real-time parking information as well as a
direction guide in parking environments. This system utilizes a VLC module, which
controls headlights and taillights of the vehicle for communication between the
vehicle and the parking‘s VLC module installed on the ceiling, ground and the
boom-barrier. However, [13] has ignored the following practical considerations in
their system design: some optical interferences cancelation such as DC
component of environment visible light and AC line noise of street lights such as
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 incandescent lamps, and; sufficient data bit rate for data transmission in
particular when the data code frame is large enough. In contrast to the
experimental results in [13] where the designed module has been tested in an
indoor environment without considering the impact of angular positions of the
transmitter and receiver, we determine an operating region in terms of both
incident and irradiance angles where the system is able to operate accurately with
a targeted Bit Error Rate (BER) of lower than

in an outdoor environment. Authors in

[14] proposed a VLC-based smart parking system which utilizes a low power
microcontroller (MSP430) for controlling utilized sensors. In this project, VLC
medium is used in purpose of transmitting information of available parking slots
between designed modules in the parking side and in the vehicle. In [15], authors
proposed a smart parking system containing three parts of vehicle identification,
parking space detection, and indoor localization, which utilizes PassiveVLC
technique. PassiveVLC is a bidirectional optical backscatter communication system
between ViReaders and ViTags which are electronic designs integrated into the
LED-based infrastructure [16]. In addition, authors in [17] introduced an intelligent
parking system for detecting available parking slots using PassiveVLC. In [18], an
energy efficient lighting system for indoor parking based on VLC was introduced
for both illumination and data communication purposes. In this paper, the desired
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and BER has obtained by optimizing the position of
LEDs installed on the ceiling of the parking lot. In addition, the utilized
modulations are multi-level pulse modulations along with simple OOK. Authors in
[19] proposed a smart parking navigation system based on VLC which utilizes a
LED lighting system for communication between utilized sensors and vehicle for
transmitting both positioning and parking space vacancy information. A
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 comparison table including all related research works in the area of VLC-based
smart parking systems has been summarized in Table 1. The key contributions of
this work are summarized below:

• We provide a new approach to tackle the DC and AC noises in

day/night time with a heuristic design. In addition, we perform
experimental analysis on the effect of incident and irradiance angles
on the BER for different link ranges where the system is exposed to
optical interferences.

• We determine an operating region in terms of both incident and

irradiance angles where the system is able to operate accurately with a

targeted BER of lower than .

• We demonstrate a VLC-based smart barrier gate concept via

implementation of a prototype system in an actual barrier gate.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the design of the VLC
transmitter for the barrier gate automation is presented. The VLC receiver design of
the proposed system which contains a new approach to address the impairments
such as unwanted DC component and AC line noise is presented in Section 3.
Section 4 presents the experimental results of the system. Finally, the conclusion
and some remarks are discussed in Section 5.

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Section snippets

VLC transmitter design

VLC systems typically work with intensity modulation and direct detection [20].
Amongst various modulation schemes, On–Off Keying (OOK) has attracted the
most attention of researchers due to its simplicity and easy implementation [21].
In OOK, symbols are represented by the presence (as “1”) and absence (as “0”) of
the pulse during a time slot. However, OOK suffers from the flickering and
synchronization problems as some data streams might have a long set of ones or
zeroes. Therefore, it is …

VLC receiver design

The designed VLC receiver for the smart barrier gate system consists of three main
parts: a photodetector with an on-chip transimpedance amplifier for detecting
received optical signals and converting them into electrical signals; an
innovative optical interference cancellation circuit in the VLC channel, and a
microcontroller to perform the 2-DPPM demodulation algorithm and store the
security codes of vehicles in a database. These three components are described in
the following …

Experimental results

The block diagram of the proposed VLC-based smart barrier gate system is
depicted in Fig. 6. For this system, Elglux C6 DC9-36VAuto LED headlight bulb is
selected as the transmission source. The LED technology used in the LED headlight
bulb is an array of phosphor coated Chip-on-Board (COB) LEDs with the total
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 transmitted power of 36 W. It is capable of producing up to 7600 lumens of light
with the semiangle of degrees. Since LEDs are placed in the headlights, the
LED semiangle is limited …

Conclusion

In this paper, a VLC-based smart barrier gate system, which is an alternative to the
conventional RFID-based system, was implemented and designed based on Vehicle
to Infrastructure (V2I) scenario. This system utilized car LED headlamps to send an
optical security code, using 2-DPPM with an achievable data rate of 30 kbps and
the maximum link range of m. In addition, an interference cancellation circuit
was designed for the sake of nullifying the optical interferences in the VLC channel.
The …

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or
personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in
this paper. …

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