Evaluation of Fog Effects on Optical Camera Communications Link

Abstract

The applications of Optical Camera Communications (OCC) have been tested for vehicular communications, Internet-of-things (IoT), and other outdoor scenarios due to the vast availability of standard camera equipment. The outdoor channel is, however, affected by atmospheric conditions, ranging from the presence of particles or water drops in the air to thermally induced fluctuations of the refractive index (turbulence). In this work, we experimentally investigate the influence of fog on an OCC link exploiting rolling shutter cameras and using red-green-blue (RGB) channels inside a laboratory chamber featuring a fog machine. The analysis is performed using the Pearson's correlation coefficient between test and reference signals as a measure of similarity or decay of the signal attenuation of fog associated with atmospheric visibility.