Vehicle Sensing and Communications using LED Headlights to Enhance the Performance of Intelligent Transportation Systems: Proof of Concept, Implementation, and Applications

This project investigates the use of vehicle light-emitting diode (LED) headlamp devices for improving the accuracy and reliability of traffic (sensing and communication) data measurements required for developing effective intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies and solutions. Vehicular communication and sensing technologies are mainly based on conventional radio frequency (RF) or laser technologies. These systems suffer from several issues such as RF interference and poor performance in scenarios where the incidence angle between the speed detector and the vehicle is rapidly varying. Introducing a new sensing technology will add diversity to these systems and enhance the reliability of the real-time data. In this project, we proposed and investigated a novel speed estimation sensing system named “Visible Light Detection and Ranging (ViLDAR)” (patent pending). ViLDAR utilizes visible light-sensing technology to measure the variation of the vehicle’s headlamp light intensity to estimate the vehicle speed. Similarly, visible light sensing technology is used for data communication purposes, where the vehicle headlamp is utilized for wireless data transmission purposes. This project outlines the ViLDAR system simulations, implementation including hardware and software components, experimental evaluation in both laboratory and outdoor environments. The experimental measurement settings of the ViLDAR experiments are detailed. Encouraging results for both sensing and communication scenarios are obtained. The outcome of this proof-of-concept study both in the laboratory and outdoor validates the merit of the proposed technology in speed estimation (sensing) and data communication. The outcomes of this project will inspire a wide and diverse range of researchers, scientists and practitioners from the ITS community to explore this new and exciting technology. This project built initial steps in exploring this new sensing and communication modality using vehicle headlamps, leaving open a wide field for exploration and novel research

Random Subcarrier Allocation in OFDM-Based Cognitive Radio Networks and Hyper Fading Channels

Advances in communications technologies entail demands for higher data rates. One of the popular solutions to fulfill this requirement was to allocate additional bandwidth, which unfortunately is not anymore viable due to spectrum scarcity. In addition, spectrum measurements around the globe have revealed the fact that the available spectrum is under-utilized. One of the most remarkable solutions to cope with the under-utilization of radio-frequency (RF) spectrum is the concept of cognitive radio (CR) with spectrum sharing features, also referred to as spectrum sharing systems. In CR systems, the main implementation issue is spectrum sensing because of the uncertainties in propagation channel, hidden primary user (PU) problem, sensing duration and security issues. Hence, the accuracy and reliability of the spectrum sensing information may inherently be suspicious and questionable. Due to the imprecise spectrum sensing information, this dissertation investigates the performance of an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based CR spectrum sharing communication system that assumes random allocation and absence of the PU's channel occupation information, i.e., no spectrum sensing is employed to acquire information about the availability of unused subcarriers or the PU's activity. In addition, no cooperation occurs between the transmitters of the PUs and secondary users (SUs). The main benefit of random subcarrier utilization is to uniformly distribute the amount of SUs' interference among the PUs' subcarriers, which can be termed as interference spreading. The analysis and performance of such a communication set-up provides useful insights and can be utilized as a valid benchmark for performance comparison studies in CR spectrum sharing systems that assume the availability of spectrum sensing information. In the first part this dissertation, due to the lack of information about PUs' activities, the SU randomly allocates the subcarriers of the primary network and collide with the PUs' subcarriers with a certain probability. The average capacity of SU with subcarrier collisions is employed as performance measure to investigate the proposed random allocation scheme for both general and Rayleigh channel fading models. In the presence of multiple SUs, the multiuser diversity gain of SUs is also investigated. To avoid the subcarrier collisions at the SUs due to the random allocation scheme and to obtain the maximum sum rate for SUs based on the available subcarriers, an efficient centralized sequential algorithm based on the opportunistic scheduling and random allocation (utilization) methods is proposed to ensure the orthogonality of assigned subcarriers. In the second part of this dissertation, in addition to the collisions between the SUs and PUs, the inter-cell collisions among the subcarriers of SUs (belonging to different cells) are assumed to occur due to the inherent nature of random access scheme. A stochastic analysis of the number of subcarrier collisions between the SUs' and PU's subcarriers assuming fixed and random number of subcarriers requirements for each user is conducted. The performance of the random scheme in terms of capacity and capacity (rate) loss caused by the subcarrier collisions is investigated by assuming an interference power constraint at PU to protect its operation. Lastly, a theoretical channel fading model, termed hyper fading channel model, that is suitable to the dynamic nature of CR channel is proposed and analyzed. To perform a general analysis, the achievable average capacity of CR spectrum sharing systems over the proposed dynamic fading environments is studied

Time-frequency warped waveforms for well-contained massive machine type communications

This paper proposes a novel time-frequency warped waveform for short symbols, massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and internet of things (IoT) applications. The waveform is composed of asymmetric raised cosine (RC) pulses to increase the signal containment in time and frequency domains. The waveform has low power tails in the time domain, hence better performance in the presence of delay spread and time offsets. The time-axis warping unitary transform is applied to control the waveform occupancy in time-frequency space and to compensate for the usage of high roll-off factor pulses at the symbol edges. The paper explains a step-by-step analysis for determining the roll-off factors profile and the warping functions. Gains are presented over the conventional Zero-tail Discrete Fourier Transform-spread-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (ZT-DFT-s-OFDM), and Cyclic prefix (CP) DFT-s-OFDM schemes in the simulations section.United States Department of Energy (DOE) ; Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research ; National Science Foundation (NSF

Time-Frequency Warped Waveforms for Well-Contained Massive Machine Type Communications

This paper proposes a novel time-frequency warped waveform for short symbols, massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and internet of things (IoT) applications. The waveform is composed of asymmetric raised cosine (RC) pulses to increase the signal containment in time and frequency domains. The waveform has low power tails in the time domain, hence better performance in the presence of delay spread and time offsets. The time-axis warping unitary transform is applied to control the waveform occupancy in time-frequency space and to compensate for the usage of high roll-off factor pulses at the symbol edges. The paper explains a step-by-step analysis for determining the roll-off factors profile and the warping functions. Gains are presented over the conventional Zero-tail Discrete Fourier Transform-spread-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (ZT-DFT-s-OFDM), and Cyclic prefix (CP) DFT-s-OFDM schemes in the simulations section.Comment: This paper has been accepted by IEEE JSAC special issue on 3GPP Technologies: 5G-Advanced and Beyond. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

ViLDAR - Visible Light Sensing Based Speed Estimation using Vehicle's Headlamps

The introduction of light emitting diodes (LED) in automotive exterior lighting systems provides opportunities to develop viable alternatives to conventional communication and sensing technologies. Most of the advanced driver-assist and autonomous vehicle technologies are based on Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) or Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems that use radio frequency or laser signals, respectively. While reliable and real-time information on vehicle speeds is critical for traffic operations management and autonomous vehicles safety, RADAR or LiDAR systems have some deficiencies especially in curved road scenarios where the incidence angle is rapidly varying. In this paper, we propose a novel speed estimation system so-called the Visible Light Detection and Ranging (ViLDAR) that builds upon sensing visible light variation of the vehicle's headlamp. We determine the accuracy of the proposed speed estimator in straight and curved road scenarios. We further present how the algorithm design parameters and the channel noise level affect the speed estimation accuracy. For wide incidence angles, the simulation results show that the ViLDAR outperforms RADAR/LiDAR systems in both straight and curved road scenarios. A provisional patent (US#62/541,913) has been obtained for this work