Potentialities and challenges of VLC based outdoor

positioning
Trong-Hop Do

Myungsik Yoo

School of Electrical Engineering

Soongsil University, South Korea

School of Electrical Engineering

Soongsil University, South Korea

AbstractWhile visible light communication (VLC) with inherent advantages is believed to be the next generation of wireless
technology, positioning using visible light also has the potential
of becoming a standard approach for positioning in the future.
Although many indoor positioning systems based VLC have
been proposed recently, there is very few paper related outdoor
positioning using visible light. In this paper, firstly we point out
difficulties when using visible light for outdoor positioning. Then
we survey existing indoor positioning techniques using visible
light and evaluate the potentialities and challenges of applying
them to outdoor positioning.

I.

II.

VLC BASED POSITIONING AND GENERAL

DIFFICULTIES

A. Fundamentals of VLC based positioning

VLC based positioning determines the position of the
mobile device through signals received from nearby base
stations. These visible light signals might contain IDs and
coordinates of the base stations, or other kinds of information.
The communication between a mobile device and base stations
is similar to VLC, which is described in Fig. 1.

I NTRODUCTION

Over the last fiew years, LED with many favorable characteristics such as low cost, long life-time, and cool operation
has been considered as the next generation of lighting device.
Compared to WiFi, the visible light from LED is much less
dangerous to human health. Although being affected by bad
weather conditions such as rain or fog, the range of the visible
light is much longer than that of WiFi. Finally, unlike WiFi,
lighting systems are installed almost everywhere: indoor, urban
canyon, highway, parking lot and so forth. Therefore, visible
light might be a better solution for outdoor positioning at
least in these aspects. However, the main reason for finding
new positioning techniques using visible light is not about the
current limitations of WiFi, but the prospects of using the LED
visible light in the future. VLC using LED light is believed to
be the next generation of wireless technology. Itis also believed
to be just the technique that enables Internet of Things (IoT).
Also serving as lighting devices, VLC base stations might be
installed everywhere in the near future, unfolding the potential
of implementing VLC based positioning system.
In VLC based positioning, a mobile device relies on signals
received from the base station to determine its position. Compared to other positioning techniques, VLC based positioning
is the new trend that gains considerable attention recently.
However, studies pertaining to VLC based positionings mainly
deal with the indoor case. There is very few paper dealing
with outdoor VLC positioning. This might be because of
many difficulties arising when using visible light for outdoor
positioning: ambient light noise, optical defects in lens and
so forth. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we
point out difficulties in outdoor positioning system based VLC.
Second, we survey existing VLC based indoor positioning
techniques and discuss challenges of applying them to the
outdoor case.
978-1-4799-8342-1/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

474

Fig. 1: Data transmission in VLC

As in VLC, photo diode (PD) or image sensor can be
used as receiver.The advantages that one kind of receiver has
over the other will deterrmine the technique to be used for
positioning. Next, we will explain the basis of two kinds of
receiver and how suitable they are for different positioning
techniques.
1) Photodiode: In both VLC and infrared communication,
PD just converts any light into current and cannot separate
signals from different light sources. PD has fast response
time which makes it possible to measure small period of
time of signal arival. Therefore, PD is suitable to be used for
time based positioning techniques such as TOA and TDOA.
PD is also more suitable for received signal strength (RSS)
positioning technique. In general, PD has been used quite
successfully for indoor positioning.However, one serious flaw
of PD is that its vulnerability to ambient light makes it very
hard to be used for outdoor positioning. Image sensor is better
than PD in this regard.
2) Image sensor: Besides PD, image sensor is also used as
receiver in VLC. The quite slow frame rate of image sensor
compared to the response time PD does not allow it to be
used to measure small period of time in time based positioning
techniques. However, the capability of image sensor to capture
images from which the angle and distance of the light source
ICOIN 2015

and other information can be derived enables a variety of

positioning techniques. The ability to separate signals from
different light sources also makes image sensor less vulnerable
to ambient light. For these reasons, image sensor is the suitable
receiver for outdoor positioning.
B. General difficulties of outdoor VLC based positioning
1) Ambient light noise: VLC and VLC based positioning
are susceptible to ambient light noise, especially when PD
is used as receiver. During daytime, the sunlight luminance
might be hundreds of thousand of lux-much higher than that
of typical LEDs used in indoor VLC system which are less
than 1000lux. [1] and [2] pointed out that it is very hard for PD
to detect the LED light signal under direct sunlight due to PD
saturation problem. There were efforts to solve the sunlight
issues in VLC but the results were still very limited. [1]
designed an optical filter which blocks light incident from an
angle of 30 or higher coming to the PD. [2] built a simple light
shield to hide the PD from direct sunlight while [3] presented
a more technical solution that bases on the cancelation of the
minimum offset voltage of the input signal to remove the noise
from incident light. The common point of these approaches is
that they all require the PD to direct right toward the light
source. This is hard to achieved in outdoor positioning system
as the PD need to receive signal from multiple light sources,
which might be placed remotely to each other at unknown
position.
With the capability to distinguish light sources, image
sensor is much less affected by the ambient light compared
to PD. When the sun or other unmodulated light sources are
present in the frame captured by an image sensor, soon it will
be known that these light sources do not covey any information
and should be ignored. However, the inevitable lens fault when
combined with a strong light source would result in haze
or ghost which degrade the image quality and make it more
difficult to detect the signal light source. Rather than sunlight,
skylight, which has the illuminance tens time higher than
that of LEDs is a bigger issue for outdoor positioning using
image sensor. Fortunately, LED can be installed on cars, traffic
panels, or advertisement panels which make the LED visible
against skylight and thus enable outdoor communication and
positioning [4].
2) Clock resolution, response time of PD, frame rate of
image sensor, and synchronization: When using time measurement based positioning such as TDoA or ToA, the clock
resolution need to be very high to measure small quantity of
time. As a rule of thumb, a timing error of 1nsec can lead
to an estimation error of 30cm, which is the distance of light
travelling during 1nsec. Even with a fine resolution clock, the
accuracy of time measurement depends on the response time
of PDs as well as the frame rate of image sensors. The higher
the response time and frame rate are, the more accurate time
can be measured.
For time based positioning, synchronization among base
stations as well as between base stations and mobile device
are prerequisite requirements. The synchronization among base
stations, which are close to each other can be achieved
with high accuracy through wire connections. Synchronization
475

between base stations and mobile devices, in the other hand,

is much harder to achieve, especially in outdoor environment.
The reason is that all synchronization methods rely on some
sort of exchanging messages between senders and receiver, and
the measurement of time at both sides. Even if the time measurement can be acquired accurately with PD, the challenges
of outdoor VLC mentioned above (e.g. ambient light noise)
makes it very hard to achieve good synchronization between
base stations and mobile devices in outdoor environment.
3) Lens distortion: The accuracy of those methods using
image sensors are determined by the optical quality of the
lenses attached to them. The biggest issue of lens for positioning is lens distortion which bends straight line in a scene
into non-straight line in the image as described in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2: Lens distortion

Any lens has more or less distortion. Lens with narrower

angle of view has less distortion. However if the angle of view
is too small, the image sensor needs to direct right toward the
light sources to receive signals. In outdoor application, the base
stations might be distant to each other, and the mobile device
might move fast, making it harder to use narrow angle lenses.
III.

S URVEY OF VLC BASED POSITIONING TECHNIQUES

A. Based on trilateration
Trilateration is the method for determining position by
measurement of distance, using geometric properties of circles,
spheres or triangles. At least three base stations are required for
this method. Time of Arrival (TOA), Time Different of Arrival
(TDOA), and Received Signal Strength (RSS) are trilateration
based techniques.
1) TOA: TOA derives the distances between base stations
and mobile device from the absolute arrival time of signal
and base on these distances to calculate the position. As
mentioned earlier, PD would be used for the required accurate
measurement of time. TOA requires synchronization between
base stations and mobile device and the positioning accuracy
depend thoroughly on the synchronization. In [5], the accuracy
of TOA based indoor positioning using visible light was
analyzed. It was shown that the error is in the order of
centimeters, given perfect synchronization between transmitter
and receiver. Nevertheless this is a unrealistic assumption as
discussed in the previous section. In practical, TOA is hard
to achieve high accuracy of positioning, which explains why
until now there is few if any experimental paper related VLC
based TOA positioning, especially for outdoor environment.
2) TDOA: TDOA uses the time difference between arrival
times of signals from different base stations to calculate the

position. Unlike TOA, TDOA does not require the synchronization between base stations and mobile device but only the
synchronization between base stations, which can be achieved
much easier. There is a number of studies related VLC based
TDOA positioning [6-7]. Both [6] and [7] use PD as receiver
and present different techniques to separate signals from
multiple base stations. In [6], each base station sequentially
transmits pilot signal after every guard time period. Thus,
there is only one base station transmiting at a time. In [7],
multiple base stations simultaneously transmit signals which
has optical powers are time-domain cosine waves of specific
angular frequencies. A complicated technique is then used to
separate these signals from the mixed received signals.

Fig. 3: Circular PD array for estimating AOA

In theory, TDOA can be implemented with less complexity

compared to TOA, and can achieve high accuracy. Yet the
requirement of accurate time measurement demands the use
of PD which is difficult to operate in outdoor environment.
Therefore, VLC based TDOA might be suitable for only indoor
positioning.
3) RSS: In RSS, the power of light signal received by PD
or image sensor is combined with trilateration to determine the
position. [8] proposes an RSS based VLC indoor positioning
system using PD as receiver. Time division multimplexing
(TDM) is used to separate signals from different LED lamps.
Based on the received signal strength, the distance ratio
between pair of LED lamps is derived. Then the position
is found as the intersection of circles which have equations
obtained from these distance ratios. The simulation shows that
an accuracy of less than 4cm can be achieved with this method.
Despite that RSS has the least implementation complexity
among positioning techinques, it also suffers the most from
ambient light and multipath fading. Usually PD with better
capability of measuring signal power will be used for RSS.
Besides the difficulties of PD in receiving signal, the dominant
power of ambient light would change the received signal power
ratio severely from the real value and makes it difficulty to
estimate the position correctly.
B. Based on triangulation-AoA
Rather than using distance, triangulation uses angles of
arrival (AoA) of signals from at least two base stations to
calculate the position. The angle of signal arrival can be
obtained through PD array or image sensor.
[9] proposes an interesting technique of estimating AOA
through a circular-PD-array as illustrated in Fig. 3. Based on
the fact that the radiation of LED light follow the Lambert
cosine law, which causes the change of received power not
only by the distance but also the incidence angle and the
radiance angle , AOA can be obtained through the relation
between the received powers and the known angle of each PD.
With the AOA of two or more base stations, the position of a
mobile device can be derived.
Fllowing the similar approach with [9], [10] present an
indoor positioning system consisting of an LED array and
multiple tilted PDs as described in Fig. 4. The incidence angle
differences of signal comming to different PDs are deduced
from the differences of signal received in different PDs. Given
476

Fig. 4: Multiple tilted PD for estimating AOA

the heigh of PD, the other two dimensional coordinate of the

PD can be obtained from the angles of arrival. Combining
AOA and RSS, the three-dimensional position of the mobile
device can be obtained.
AOA positioning techniques usually use PD to deduce the
AOA as presented above. The positioning system in [9] and
[10] work well in indoor environment, but when applied to
outdoor, they would have the same weakness as other PD based
positioning techniques as disscussed above.
C. Based on collinearity condition
This approach uses image sensor to capture the image of
multiple light sources then bases on collinearity conditions
to determine the position and direction of the mobile device.
Collinearity condition is the relation between the real world
coordinate of objects, the real world coordinate of image
sensor, and the image coordinate of projections of objects on
sensor plane.

Fig. 5: Collinearity condition

Assuming object P has the projection P on the image

as described in Fig. 5, we can derive the following equations
from collinearity condition:
11 (XX0 )+R21 (Y Y0 )+R31 (ZZ0 )
x x0 = c R
R13 (XX0 )+R23 (Y Y0 )+R33 (ZZ0 )

y y0 =

(1)

12 (XX0 )+R22 (Y Y0 )+R32 (ZZ0 )

c R
R13 (XX0 )+R23 (Y Y0 )+R33 (ZZ0 )

where c is the focal length, and R is the rotation matrix.

Thus, to determine the position of mobile device using
collinearity condition, two information must be acquired. The
first is the real world coordinate of the base stations, which
is usually obtained from the signal sent from base stations.
The second is the image coordinate of the projection, which
is obtained by image processing. In Eq. (1), the value of all
variables are known except X0 , Y0 and Z0 , which are the
coordination of mobile device. X0 , Y0 and Z0 can be found
when we have three set of Eq. (1).
[11] presents a collinearity condition based positioning
system which is claimed to be able to operate in both indoor
a urban canyon. In [11], thee LED base stations sends their
coordinate to the receiver, which is an image sensor. The image
sensor separates the arriving light signals by using lens. The
three LED light sources are detected in the image. Then the
position of mobile device is calculated through collinearity
condition. Assuming that there is no lens distortion, the simulation shows that the error of this technique is about 7cm when
10001000 pixels resolution sensor is used.
[12] proposes an indoor positioning system in which two
image sensors are used to receive 3D coordinates of LED base
stations. The position of the mobile device is then calculated
based on geometrical relations. The simulation shows that
the root mean square positioning errors are 46cm and 30cm
corresponding to 25 and 10 FOV lenses, respectively.
In theory, collinearity condition based approach gives lower
accuracy than TOA, TDOA, RSS, or AOA due to many factor
determining its performance: 1. Contrast between light source
and background: sunlight can lower down the contrast and
make it difficult to detect the light source in the image. 2.
Resolution of sensor: higher resolution sensor would give better accuracy of positioning. 3. Distortion of lens, which causes
the objects to appear at the wrong positions in the image. 4.
Field of view of lens: lens with narrower angle of view (i.e.
longer focal length) would capture more details of image and
thus provides better accuracy. For all that, this approach can do
what the others cannot: positioning in outdoor environment. In
addition, with the developement of camera technology, image
sensors with higher and higher resolution are produced at
lower cost. The dynamic range of image sensor is increasing,
allowing it to stand better against sunlight. The issue of lens
distortion can also be solved through calibration methods. So in
practical, collinearity condition based positioning using image
sensor and similar approaches are the most suitable technique
for outdoor positioning.
IV.

C ONCLUSION

In this paper, we explain difficulties in outdoor positioning

based on VLC. It is shown that the ambient light, especially
477

sunlight is the biggest problem causing many indoor VLC

positioning functionless in outdoor environment. Then we
survey existing VLC based positioning techniques including:
trilateration, triangulation, and collinearity condition based.
Both trilateration and triangulation based techniques use PD as
receiver and thus are vulnerable to ambient light in outdoor environment. Collinearity condition based techniqes, in the other
hand, employs image sensor as receiver. Although collinearity
condition based techniques suffer from many sources of error
including ambient light noise, sensor resolution, lens distortion,
and lens FOV, the capability of standing against even sunlight
noise makes it become the most promissing technique for
outdoor positioning based VLC.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was supported by the Ministry of Science,
ICT & Future Planning (MSIP), Korea, under the Convergence
Information Technology Research Center (Covergence-ITRC)
support program (NIPA-2014-H0401-14-1005) supervised by
the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA).
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