NLOS visible light positioning and communication based on LoRa modulation

Abstract

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things, location-based services are becoming increasingly important, especially in indoor environments. Visible light positioning (VLP) has garnered widespread attention due to its high accuracy, low cost, and immunity to the radio frequency electromagnetic interference. However, traditional VLP relies on line-of-sight paths, making it impractical in complex and dynamic indoor environments. In this paper, we propose a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) visible light positioning and communication system based on LoRa modulation to address the issue of link obstruction. LoRa is employed to recover position information transmitted from light emitting diodes (LEDs) over NLOS links, enabling reliable communication under weak lighting conditions. We establish a geometric relationship between the LED and the virtual image of the photodetector (PD). Leveraging the NLOS channel model, we derive the relationship between the received signal strength and the distance from LEDs to the virtual image of the PD. Through this relationship, the trilateration method is applied to calculate the position of the receiver. Based on experimental results, the proposed system achieves 90th percentile localization accuracy of less than 25 and 35 cm for the PD heights of 60 and 80 cm, respectively.