Real-world Latency Analysis of Vehicular Visible Light Communication with Multiple LED Transmitters and an Event-Based Camera

2026-05-06

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges of bandwidth saturation, difficulty in receiving signals from multiple transmitters, and insufficiently low end-to-end latency for cooperative perception in vehicular visible light communication (VLC). To overcome these limitations, the authors propose an event camera–based VLC system employing a lightweight protocol that utilizes only positive events. This design effectively suppresses redundant events while preserving a wide field of view and long communication range, enabling simultaneous recognition of multiple LED signals. The study presents the first real-vehicle demonstration of concurrent multi-LED reception using an event camera, with empirical measurements of end-to-end latency. Experimental results show that the system reliably receives signals from three LEDs under real-world road conditions, achieving latency that meets V2X cooperative perception requirements, thereby validating event-based VLC as a viable complement to conventional RF-based V2X systems.

Abstract

Event cameras offer high temporal resolution, low latency, and wide dynamic range, making them promising receivers for visible light communication (VLC) in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications. This work presents an event-camera-based VLC system addressing three key challenges: bandwidth saturation, multi-transmitter reception, and latency characterization. We adopt a positive-event-only mode and design a protocol that suppresses event generation while maintaining communication distance and a wide field of view. We also propose a method to identify multiple transmitters and demonstrate simultaneous reception from up to three LEDs. Finally, we evaluate end-to-end latency in real vehicular scenarios and show that the system meets cooperative perception requirements. These results demonstrate that event-camera-based VLC is a feasible complement to existing V2X technologies (e.g., RF).

Problem

• Vehicular Visible Light Communication
• Event Camera
• Multi-transmitter Reception
• Latency Characterization
• Bandwidth Saturation

Innovation

• event-based camera
• visible light communication
• multi-transmitter reception
• low latency
• V2X