Design and implementation of IEEE802.15.7-compliant services in Visible-light Personal Area Networks composed by low-cost embedded systems

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is the technique adopting light frequencies in the visible spectrum for free space communications. Visible light is an unlicensed medium with worldwide availability, not interfering with other radio-based transmissions. The use of visible light as a communication medium is still at early stages, yet research activities have been exploring different solutions in the last few years to achieve high data rates and reliable links using common LEDs and light sensors. VLC can be used in a variety of applications or end user segments, exploiting already existing lighting infrastructures and thus making VLC a cheap communication system. Among these applications, a prominent case study is that of ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems), where car headlamps and traffic lights can be used to communicate and fulfill the requirements of road safety applications; other currently investigated applications refer to indoor positioning exploiting lighting systems, home networking system, and underwater communication. IEEE undertook standardization activities on VLC, resulting in the IEEE 802.15.7 standard, which disciplines PHY and MAC layer services for Visible-light Personal Area Networks (VPANs). This Master Thesis aims at the implementation of a VLC prototype based on IEEE 802.15.7 standard, using embedded systems as the target platforms, suitable for the integration in already existing PANs and in more complex architectures like ITS