Edge Communication with Visible Light Backscatter


Project Overview

Funding: 08.2017 ~ 12.2018

Partners: TUM (Germany) and PKU (China)

Description

The visible light backscatter communication (VLBC) is a novel design inspired by the idea of radio backscatter system. In essence, VLBC is designed based on the philosophy of asymmetric communication. Similar to RFID system, it has a reader (ViReader) residing in the lighting infrastructure (e.g., head light) and a tag (ViTag) integrated in road side infrastructure, mobile devices or sensor nodes. The design of ViTag consists of a light sensor, a retro-reflective fabric, a transparent LCD shutter and the control circuits while ViReader is a typical VLC device.

In this project, we will design and develop visible light backscatter communication (VLBC) solutions to enhance mobile edge communication. Regarding use cases, VLBC can be immediately useful for road safety enhancement. By equipping the targets of interests with this technology, the car headlights take initiatives to sending the polling information over the light beam and retrieve the response from the reflected light carrier for object recognition, information retrieval, etc. -- This new M2M communication mechanism is more effective than computer vision approach, especially in dark environments or at night. Given the potential of VLBC, we expect results in terms of publications, open-source software release, and potential adoption by the automotive industry in Germany.

Publications


Project Members


 TU Munich
Prof. Dr. Jörg Ott

Project Co-Leader
Chair of Connected Mobility, TUM
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Dr. Aaron Yi Ding

Project Co-Leader
Chair of Connected Mobility, TUM
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Michael Haus

PhD Researcher
Chair of Connected Mobility, TUM
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 Peking University
Prof. Chenren Xu

Project Co-Leader
Department of Computer Science, PKU
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