DYRP-VLC: a dynamic routing protocol for visible light communication networks

Abstract

In the last decade, the interest in Visible Light Communication (VLC) has increased considerably, from both academic and commercial perspectives, due to factors such as the growing demand for wireless resources and the advantages offered by the transmission of data through visible light. However, the use of light as a communication medium, especially in indoor environments, offers several challenges, which includes shadowing and interference caused by obstacles. At the same time, this type of environment offers a rich infrastructure of light sources, which can be used to aid communication through multi-hop mechanisms. Most of the works present in the literature adopt simple techniques to construct multi-hop mechanisms in VLC networks, focusing mainly on increasing distance. Inthisthesis,wedevelopedDYRP-VLC(DynamicRoutingProtocolforVisibleLight Communication), a reactive routing protocol which aims to increase the performance ofVLCsystemsindynamicenvironments,whilereactingtoobstaclesbyconstructing alternative routes in the network. The evaluation of the protocol was performed in a real environment, using OpenVLC 1.0 embedded platform and adopting metrics for routing problems. The results show that, by using DYRP-VLC, the network was able to adapt to dynamic changes in communication, such as shadows and obstacles, with low overhead.