Visible Light Communication (VLC) has the potential to advance Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). This study explores the current advancements of VLC in ITS applications that may enhance traffic flow, road safety, and vehicular communication performance. The potential, benefits, and current research trends of VLC in ITS applications are discussed first. Then, the state-of-the-art VLC technologies including overall concept, IEEE communication protocols, hybrid VLC systems, and software-defined adaptive MIMO VLC systems, are discussed. We investigated different potential applications of VLC in ITS, such as signalized intersection and ramp metering control, collision warning and avoidance, vehicle localization and detection, and vehicle platooning using vehicle–vehicle (V2V), infrastructure–vehicle (I2V), and vehicle–everything (V2X) communications. Besides, VLC faces several challenges in ITS applications, and these concerns, e.g., environmental issues, communication range issues, standards and infrastructure integration issues, light conditions and integration issues are discussed. Finally, this paper discusses various advanced techniques to enhance VLC performance in ITS applications, such as machine learning-based channel estimation, adaptive beamforming, robust modulation schemes, and hybrid VLC integration. With this review, the authors aim to inform academics, engineers, and policymakers about the status and challenges of VLC in ITS. It is expected that, by applying VLC in ITS, mobility will be safer, more efficient, and sustainable.

Short-term load forecasting (STLF) plays a crucial role in the planning, management, and stability of a country’s power system operation. In this study, we have developed a novel approach that can simultaneously predict the load demand of different regions in Bangladesh. When making predictions for loads from multiple locations simultaneously, the overall accuracy of the forecast can be improved by incorporating features from the various areas while reducing the complexity of using multiple models. Accurate and timely load predictions for specific regions with distinct demographics and economic characteristics can assist transmission and distribution companies in properly allocating their resources. Bangladesh, being a relatively small country, is divided into nine distinct power zones for electricity transmission across the nation. In this study, we have proposed a hybrid model, combining the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), designed to forecast load demand seven days ahead for each of the nine power zones simultaneously. For our study, nine years of data from a historical electricity demand dataset (from January 2014 to April 2023) are collected from the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) website. Considering the nonstationary characteristics of the dataset, the Interquartile Range (IQR) method and load averaging are employed to deal effectively with the outliers. Then, for more granularity, this data set has been augmented with interpolation at every 1 h interval. The proposed CNN-GRU model, trained on this augmented and refined dataset, is evaluated against established algorithms in the literature, including Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTM), GRU, CNN-LSTM, CNN-GRU, and Transformer-based algorithms. Compared to other approaches, the proposed technique demonstrated superior forecasting accuracy in terms of mean absolute performance error (MAPE) and root mean squared error (RMSE). The dataset and the source code are openly accessible to motivate further research.