About This Project

Whilst digital co-pilots are urgently needed than ever before to foster the individual capabilities of our cars, sharing data among them can make our driving experiences safer and less stressful, especially on high-speed roads.

This project strives to develop an affordable versatile test-bed for extensive experimentation to assess the reliability of Li-Fi (light fidelity; a promising alternative to Wi-Fi ) as a medium to connect independent digital co-pilots.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

To date, the majority of driver’s digital assistants are still independent and rely on conventional radio-frequency Wi-Fi technologies, which are neither cheap nor hassle-free. Therefore, engineers and researchers have shifted their focus to Li-Fi technologies–a rapidly emerging alternative to Wi-Fi. The development of Li-Fi-based solutions usually begins with an open source hardware platform driven by a commercial single board computer (SBC). However, supplies of such patented-technology SBCs become suddenly short, leading to higher prices, purchase limits and, ultimately, slacken the development of mature Li-Fi-based vehicular solutions. The availability of a completely DIY Li-Fi platform using low-cost off-the-shelf opto-electronics would add momentum to this field.

What is the significance of this project?

This project responds to a pressing need for feasible low-cost driving assistance solutions that can continuously monitor vehicle’s status, and cooperatively communicate with the driver, other vehicles and the infrastructure to achieve a safe and smooth driving experience. Emerging solutions are gradually adopting Li-Fi as a promising vehicular technology and, at this point in time, the availability of a DIY Li-Fi test-bed that everyone has equal chance to access will remove technological and financial barriers for many talented designers, which will help them release innovative contributions and ultimately, advance the research and development in this field towards safer driving assistance solutions.

What are the goals of the project?

The major goal of this project is to develop a DIY Li-Fi test-bed with significantly enhanced features on the transport layer compared to the state-of-the-art [1]. The Li-Fi platform in [1] will be radically re-engineered to increase the data rate beyond 400 kbit/s, provide advanced functionalities with less sophisticated signal processing, include arrays of multi-wavelength LEDs at the front-end (instead of a single monochromatic LED), reduce the prototyping complexity (only one board instead of two), eliminate the reliance on commercial single board computers, and facilitate the control of the transceiver hardware via a graphical user interface in a high level programming environment (instead of the more difficult black screen coding).