Signal-source trackers on Infrared-based Dedicated Short-Range Communication

Location-based ITS applications, especially the applications based on Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication, require the absolute or relative location information of the communicating objects. GPS receivers are often used to give the absolute locations of the objects. However, the updating rate and the resolution of GPS receivers are not sufficient for neighboring and highly mobile vehicles.This paper renders two designs, a one-dimensional IR signal-source tracker and a two-dimensional IR signal-source tracker, to estimate the location of a communicating target. By analyzing the strength of the received signal, the relative location of the target is identified once the communication data are received. The realized 1D and 2D IR signal-source tracker can give the precise location, where the repeated tests on the 2D tracker show the given locations with low deviation. Since these two tracker designs are realized with the same IR components in the Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC), the communicating devices, the roadside unit (RSU) and the onboard unit (OBU), can use the 1D or 2D tracker design depending on the application to locate each other, and then to control the radiation direction for saving power, to facilitate the completeness of transactions, and to locate vehicles in V2V applications.In this work, the proposed devices are designed, realized and tested. The experimental results show that these two designs are feasible.