A Survey on Visible Light Positioning from Software Algorithms to Hardware

Abstract

The prevalence of illumination equipment and the inherent advantages of the Visible Light Communication (VLC) technique have resulted in a growing interest in Visible Light Positioning (VLP). There exist many excellent VLP techniques over the past several years. However, one limitation of most VLP survey works is that they mainly focus on the analysis from the perspective of techniques but ignore the equally important hardware aspect, since the hardware part directly affects the performance and cost of VLP systems and also determines whether it can be put into practical use. Different from most surveys concentrating on a single perspective, we provide an intensive overview of VLP systems from software algorithms to hardware devices. A novel-innovative classification method is used in the software algorithms, while the hardware aspect is introduced in terms of transmitters, modems, and receivers, making up for the deficiencies of the previous works. Massive papers including pioneering papers and the state-of-the-art ones in related areas are gathered and categorized. These solutions have also been evaluated in terms of accuracy, cost, range, and complexity. Furthermore, current open issues and tendencies regarding VLP are also illustrated in this paper.