This study presents a novel approach to enhancing indoor navigation in crowded multi-terminal airports using visible light communication (VLC) technology. By leveraging existing luminaires as transmission points, encoded messages are conveyed through modulated light signals to provide location-specific guidance. The objectives are to facilitate navigation, optimize routes, and improve system performance through Edge/Fog integration. The methodology includes the use of tetrachromatic LED-equipped luminaires with On–Off Keying (OOK) modulation and a mesh cellular hybrid structure. Detailed airport modeling and user analysis (pedestrians and luggage/passenger carriers) equipped with PINPIN optical sensors are conducted. A VLC-specific communication protocol with coding and decoding techniques ensures reliable data transmission, while wayfinding algorithms offer real-time guidance. The results show effective data transmission and localization, enabling self-localization, travel direction inference, and route optimization. Agent-based simulations demonstrate improved traffic control, with analyses of user halting and average speed. This approach provides reliable indoor navigation independent of GPS signals, enhancing accessibility and convenience for airport users. The integration of VLC with Edge/Fog architecture ensures efficient movement through complex airport layouts.

This study combines Visible Light Communication (VLC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance traffic signal control, reduce congestion, and improve safety, through real-time monitoring and dynamic traffic management. Leveraging VLC technology, the system uses existing road infrastructure to transmit live data on vehicle and pedestrian positions, speeds, and queues. AI agents, employing Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), process this data to manage traffic flows dynamically, applying anti-bottleneck and rerouting techniques to balance pedestrian and vehicle waiting times. A centralized global agent coordinates the local agents controlling each intersection,enabling indirect communication and data sharing to train a unified DRL model. This model makes real-time adjustments to traffic light phases, utilizing a queue/request/response system for adaptive intersection management. Tested using simulations and real-world trials involving standard and rerouting scenarios, the approach demonstrates significantly better performance in regard to the rerouting configuration, reducing congestion and enhancing traffic flow and pedestrian safety.Scalable and adaptable to various intersection types, including four-way, T-intersections, and roundabouts, the system’s efficacy is validated using the SUMO urban mobility simulator, resulting in notable reductions to travel and waiting times for both vehicles and pedestrians.

Inefficient urban traffic management remains a critical challenge, as conventional signal controllers—built on fixed timing plans—cannot cope with the dynamic nature of modern city traffic. This study addresses this limitation by developing a decentralized MARL-based framework capable of coordinating five interconnected intersections as a unified traffic cell. Central to the proposed solution is the Strategic Anti-Blocking Phase Adjustment (SAPA) module, which enables intersections to autonomously modify phase durations in response to real-time traffic conditions. The framework is designed to handle heterogeneous demand patterns, with particular emphasis on arterial corridors connecting urban centers to peripheral zones. Integration of a Visible Light Communication (VLC) network allows continuous monitoring of key variables, including vehicle kinematics and pedestrian activity, feeding the agents with rich environmental feedback. Experimental evaluation confirms the effectiveness of the approach: the SAPA-augmented DQN achieves roughly 33% shorter vehicle queues and a ~70% reduction in pedestrian waiting counts relative to a standard DQN baseline. Remarkably, these gains bring the value-based method to a performance level comparable to MAPPO, a considerably more complex multi-agent policy optimization algorithm, establishing SAPA as an efficient and scalable enhancement for intelligent urban traffic control.