New high-data-rate multimedia services and applications are evolving continuously and exponentially increasing the demand for wireless capacity of fifth-generation (5G) and beyond. The existing radio frequency (RF) communication spectrum is insufficient to meet the demands of future high-datarate 5G services. Optical wireless communication (OWC), which uses an ultra-wide range of unregulated spectrum, has emerged as a promising solution to overcome the RF spectrum crisis. It has attracted growing research interest worldwide in the last decade for indoor and outdoor applications. OWC offloads huge data traffic applications from RF networks. A 100 Gb/s data rate has already been demonstrated through OWC. It offers services indoors as well as outdoors, and communication distances range from several nm to more than 10000 km. This paper provides a technology overview and a review on optical wireless technologies, such as visible light communication, light fidelity, optical camera communication, free space optical communication, and light detection and ranging. We survey the key technologies for understanding OWC and present state-of-the-art criteria in aspects, such as classification, spectrum use, architecture, and applications. The key contribution of this paper is to clarify the differences among different promising optical wireless technologies and between these technologies and their corresponding similar existing RF technologies.

This paper investigates optical camera communication (OCC) technologies, targeting new spectrum, multiple-input-multiple-output diversity, transmission access, and novel architectures with augmented reality user experience for the extended 5G wireless network. It provides the current OCC research status and trend pertaining to these technologies, especially an inside view on the revision of IEEE 802.15.7-2011 known as the IEEE 802.15.7m (TG7m) Optical Wireless Communication Task Group. Such standardization activities have a major impact on the development of OCC technologies. In addition, it provides a detailed review of the related literature. Herein, OCC technologies are classified into five categories to elucidate their operations and technical characteristics. Furthermore, a concise performance analysis, numerical simulations, and some comparison of the results obtained for associated systems are presented, and the future directions of research and development are discussed.

As an enhancement of cellular networks, the future-generation 5G network can be considered an ultra-high-speed technology. The proposed 5G network might include all types of advanced dominant technologies to provide remarkable services. Consequently, new architectures and service management schemes for different applications of the emerging technologies need to be recommended to solve issues related to data traffic capacity, high data rate, and reliability for ensuring QoS. Cloud computing, Internet of things (IoT), and software-defined networking (SDN) have become some of the core technologies for the 5G network. Cloud-based services provide flexible and efficient solutions for information and communications technology by reducing the cost of investing in and managing information technology infrastructure. In terms of functionality, SDN is a promising architecture that decouples control planes and data planes to support programmability, adaptability, and flexibility in ever-changing network architectures. However, IoT combines cloud computing and SDN to achieve greater productivity for evolving technologies in 5G by facilitating interaction between the physical and human world. The major objective of this study provides a lawless vision on comprehensive works related to enabling technologies for the next generation of mobile systems and networks, mainly focusing on 5G mobile communications.

This tutorial article presents an outline of image sensor communication (ISC) technologies realized by light sources and cameras. It discusses the revision of the IEEE 802.15.7-2011 standard, namely, the IEEE 802.15.7m Optical Wireless Communications Task Group, which has significantly influenced the development of the ISC technology. It also reviews the ISC technical proposals of the task group and compares them with related works. The essential technical considerations of the ISC specifications are presented, and the future directions of research and development are discussed.

This technical paper introduces an optical camera communication system for vehicles. The purpose of the communication system incorporated into car (using existing light-emitting diode (LED) lights and ordinary cameras) is to add region-of-interest signaling functionality for cars via either their headlights or taillights. A low-data-rate but reliable link via the optical channel is the objective. In particular, the communication system, contributes a spatial modulation approach called spatial-2-phase-shift keying (S2-PSK) that uses a pair of optical light sources on a car (either a pair of rear-LEDs or a pair of front-LEDs) as a transmitter. A typical camera (i.e., less than 30 frames/s), either a global shutter or a rolling shutter, can be used to receive light-modulated data. As a remarkable physical layer (PHY) operating mode among image sensor communication PHY modes recently contributed to IEEE 802.15.7r1 (TG7r1), the communication system, along with technical details on the S2-PSK communication protocol, is described in this paper. In addition, in order to deal with the noisy optical channel and the low-performance challenge of a camera receiver, we have suggested a rate-1/2 line coding and an intelligent decoding approach in our intended vehicular communication scenario. Finally, numerical analyses on the performance of our system and experiment results are addressed.

The evolution of the Internet of vehicles and growing use of mobile devices has created a demand for new wireless communication technologies. Optical camera communication, which uses light-emitting diodes as transmitters and cameras as receivers, has emerged as a promising alternative. Since light-emitting diodes and cameras are already exploring in traffic lights, vehicles, and public lightings, optical camera communication has the potential to intelligently handle transport systems. Although other technologies have been proposed or developed in both academia and industry, they are not yet mature enough to uphold the huge requirements of the Internet of vehicles. This study introduces a new intelligent Internet of vehicles system based on optical camera communication combined with convolutional neural networks. Optical camera communication is a promising candidate for maintaining interference-free and more robust communication, for supporting the Internet of vehicles. Convolutional neural network is introduced for precise detection and recognition of light-emitting diode patterns at long distances and in bad weather conditions. We propose an algorithm to detect the interested light-emitting diode signals (i.e. regions-of-interest), measure the distance using a stereo-vision technique to find out the desired targets, and simulate our proposed scheme using a MATLAB Toolbox. Thus, our system will provide great advantages for next-generation transportation systems.