International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882

Volume 3, Issue 7, October 2014

1083

Analysis of Optical Wireless Communication System at

High Speed
Manu Yadav1, Prof. R.L. Sharma2
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering
Ajay Kumar Garg Engineering College, Ghaziabad

Abstract
Optical wireless communication offers attractive features
over Radio Frequency (RF) communication for indoor
applications. This paper presents and studied a high speed
optical wireless communication system. The experiment
shows the wireless transmission at 14 Gb/s with the limited
mobility. If Wifi-based localization system is integrated
then mobility feature can be achieved. Experimental results
show that the error-free reception at BER< 10-9 over the
wide range of bit rates.

system suffers from severe multipath dispersion which

limits the transmission bit rate and also it is not energy
efficient [3]. On the other hand, the direct LOS system
employs a narrow laser beam to establish a point-to-point
transmission link between the transceivers; thereby the
transceivers must be spatially fixed to satisfy the strict
alignment requirement. Therefore no mobility can be
provided in this scheme in spite of its potential of
providing extreme high transmission bit rate [15].

Key words- Broadband communication, fiber-optics

links and subsystems, indoor optical wireless
communications, personal communication networks.

To propose a novel OW communication system,

we have to utilize the advantage of both kinds of OW
systems for indoor applications. We have also
demonstrated experimentally an error-free reception at
Bit-Error-Rate < 10-9 where we have proposed the rate of
transmission up to 14 Gb/s. The concept used by us is
similar to the hotspot proposed by D.C. OBrien et al.
[4], however we can replace a separate light source in
each hotspot, by proposing the ceiling mounted over a
fiber transmitter which is simply composed by a fiber
end, a lens and a steering mirror. All these fiber
transmitters are connected to a central office (CO) by a
fiber distribution network and multiple rooms can be
served by a single CO [15]. All the complex functions
and expensive devices are located in the CO to reduce
the cost. We also proposed to incorporate WiFi-based
localization function with the OW system and it enables
dynamic change of the beam position to provide
ubiquitous coverage of the entire room. It should also be
noted that recently a remarkable 1.25 Gb/s indoor
cellular OW communication has been experimentally
demonstrated [5]. However, an angle-diversity receiver
was used where we use multiple antennas that are
oriented in different directions and three transmitters and
receivers were needed for each user. It provides the
quality and reliability of a wireless link. It also offers
improved performance with respect to the infrared
channel characteristics. In this letter, we further improve
our system to 14 Gb/s communication. We also
experimentally investigate and quantify the trade-off
between the maximum beam footprint and achievable bit
rate of our proposed OW system.

I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless networks offers mobility and flexibility
to the user so that information can be exchanged
anywhere. Because of the high cost an alternative highspeed wireless connectivity for indoor applications is
required. Infrared is one such alternative. It was first
proposed for indoor optical wireless communication in
1979 [1]. An indoor OW communication system with
mobility feature providing both high Bandwidth and
ubiquitous coverage in Personal Area Network (PAN)
[8]. Infrared wireless LANs can potentially achieve a
very high aggregate capacity. Since transmissions in
different rooms need not be coordinated. However,
because infrared cant penetrate walls, communication of
infrared access points is interconnected via a wired
backbone [2]. Infrared is favored for short-range
applications in which per-link bit rate and aggregate
system capacity must be maximized, cost must be
minimized [2]. Therefore, for over one decade Optical
Wireless (OW) communication for indoor applications
has attracted considerable attention [7].
OW communication can be generalized into two
groups: the diffused system and the line-of-sight (LOS)
systems [2]. The former utilizes totally diffused beam
that covers the entire service area and provides mobility
functionality to subscribers. However, the diffused

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 3, Issue 7, October 2014

II. SYSTEM STRUCTURE

In our proposed system a transmitter consist of a
Central Office and fiber transmitter. Central Office
processes centrally and distributes the optical signal to a
number of access points via an optical fiber feeder
network. The Central Office also acts as a gateway to the
external network. In the access point, the fiber transmitter
is incorporated with a localization function to provide
ubiquitous coverage over a 4m 4m 3m room. With
the localization information, a comparatively
wider
divergent beam is employed to cover that users position
and its surrounding areas. Therefore high speed
data
transmission using direct LOS link with limited mobility
can be provided. When the user moves out of that area,
the users position can be identified by the localization
system, the signal light is then directed to the new
position. It gives mobility over the entire room. The
redirection of signal is realized by the proposed ceiling
mounted fiber transmitter, as shown in Fig. 1.

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Through a number of different methods, the

localization function can be realized such as WiFi-based
[11], Zigbee-based system [12] and infrared-sensorbased [13].We have chosen the WiFi-based localization
scheme in our system for its low-cost and easily
available nature. In this scheme a wider divergence beam
is employed to cover the users position. The dynamic
change of the beam position is also possible via this
scheme. Therefore, mobility feature can be achieved.
The room considered is a realistic office scenario
consisting of two rectangular cubicles with strong
background lamps. All the partitions are opaque
therefore the incident signals are either absorbed or
blocked. Furthermore, the cubicles are equipped with
tables, chairs and other office equipments. In such
scenario, due to physical obstacles result shadowing in
the worst signal reception and strong lamps creates an
environment of worst case background light. However as
the fiber transmitter is located just above the interactions
of the two adjacent cubicles, direct line-of-sight (LOS)
channel is always available [15], as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig.2. Office Scenario

III. EXPERIMENTS
Fig.1. Structure of the System
The fiber transmitter consists of a fiber end, an
adaptive lens and a steering mirror. The lens is used to
increase the divergence of the signal beam to cover a
certain area and the steering mirror is used to change its
orientation according to the localization information. At
the receiver end, a compound parabolic concentrator
(CPC) pointed straight up is employed to collect the
signal before detection with a photodiode (PD) directly
[9].

The setup of our experiments is shown in Fig. 3.

Since the WiFi-based localization system has been
studied and demonstrated, we are going to focus only on
the optical wireless transmission. The wavelength of the
transmitted optical signal is generated in a CO with a
DFB laser at 1550.12 nm and it is modulated using 14
Gbps PRBS data in on-off-keying (OOK) modulation
format. The modulated signal is transmitted to the access
point via 5.6 km standard single mode fiber. Then we
passed this signal through a lens which is used to
increase its divergence before propagating in free space.
At the user end, the signal is captured by a CPC with 45

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 3, Issue 7, October 2014

field-of-view and detected by a PD (PIN with 11.5 GHz

electrical 3 dB bandwidth and 0.8 A/W responsively at
1550 nm). Here multiple lenses and a fiber collimator
NA are used by a small sensitive area PD (0.5 mm
diameter) and a coupling system instead of a large
sensitive area PD due to our device limitation. By
carefully adjustments we will achieve a coupling loss
less than 2 dB. Then at the subscriber end the received
data is then amplified with an 18 dB gain 25 GHz
amplifier and measured using a bit error rate tester
(BERT) and a broadband digital communication analyzer
(DCA). In our experiment the measurement has also
included the strong background light from the overhead
lamps. In real scenarios the subscriber maybe constantly
moving inside the room, therefore to cover the subscriber
location on their new position the orientation of the lens
is required to be change to the new position. The
distance between the beam center and the subscriber is
always varying and the signal light will enter the CPC
with different incident angles. To quantify this we will
investigate and characterize the light properties at
different distances from the beam center. Since in the
receiver the light coupling configuration is sensitive to
any tiny movement, the characterization and
quantification are realized by tilting the transmitter
horizontally.

obvious that when the distance from beam center

increases the BER increases as well. This is simply due
to the larger signal power collected by the CPC for
smaller distance from beam center to subscriber end
while the noise power remains almost constant. At the
beam boundaries, a BER for the 14 Gbps system is
achieved. If we define an error-free operation as a BER ,
then error-free operation can be achieved when the
distance from beam center is 25cm.
To achieve error-free operation over the entire
footprint of the signal beam at the receiver, we measured
the BER at beam boundaries for different beam
footprints since the BER there is the highest. The results
are achieved in Fig. 4(b). The bit rate investigated is 14
Gbps and the transmission power is still fixed at 7 mW.
It is clear that the maximum beam footprint for 14 Gbps
system is 0.55 m. Inside this area, an error-free reception
can always be achieved. When the user moves outside
from this footprint which can be covered by our
localization system, the steering mirror will guide the
signal beam to the new position. As a result, error-free
high-speed optical wireless communication with
increased mobility can be achieved over the entire room.

Fig. 4(a). BER with respect to distance from beam

center.
Fig. 3. Experimental setup
The received signals with respect to different
distances from beam center are shown in Fig. 4(a). In all
the measurements we are going to fix the beam footprint
at the receiver to be 1 m and the transmission power to
be 7 mW, which is the maximum allowable power
according to the laser eye and skin safety regulations
[14]. We have measured the distance between the fiber
transmitter and then receiver from 0.65 m to 2.5 m while
keeping the beam footprint constant at the subscriber end
and little difference in BER performance has been
observed. The bit rate in the experiment is 14 Gbps. It is

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Fig. 4(b). BER at beam boundries for different beam

footprints.

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 3, Issue 7, October 2014

1086

than 1 m. When we will integrate this system with the

WiFi-based localization system, high-speed error-free
wireless communication can be achieved with mobility
feature over the entire room. We have also investigated
the trade-off between the beam footprint and bit rate. It
will de showed that there is a maximum beam footprint
associated with each of the bit rates investigated for
error-free reception. Therefore the bit rate and associated
beam footprint can be chosen accordingly based on
system requirements.

REFERENCES
Fig. 4(c). Maximum beam footprint for different bit
rates.
From our investigation point of view, it is obvious
that there is a trade-off between the bit rate and the size
of error-free region. To study this trade-off further, we
also measured the maximum possible beam footprint
when the system is operating at other bit rates. The
results are evaluated in Fig. 4(c). The achieved bit rate is
14 Gbps. When the bit rate is 1 Gbps, error-free
reception can be achieved over an entire footprint of 2
m. This result indicates that over the bit rate range of 1
Gbps to 14 Gb/s, error-free operation can always be
achieved with different maximum beam footprints.
Therefore, we can select different beam footprints and
bit rates according to the system requirement. The
maximum beam footprints for different bit rates are also
shown in Fig. 4(c). It can be seen that when the bit rate is
14 Gbps, the beam footprint can be larger than 1 m.
Although the system discussed here is only for
downstream communication, we have proposed the
upstream system in [10] for full-duplex operation and it
has been verified with simulation. The experimental
demonstration is still in the progress. Since the
investigation added, the integration of our system and the
multiple users situation are important issues that require
careful consideration. The steering mirror pointed in the
transmitter can be realized with MEMS. Thus the array
of these steering mirrors can be easily integrated
together. Therefore, our system can then support
multiple users when they are not within the same
coverage area either through time division multiplexing
or wavelength division multiplexing.

IV. CONCLUSION
We proposed and demonstrated a 14 Gbps optical
wireless communication system with limited mobility
and error free reception within a footprint of 0.55 m. If
ECC is employed, this region can be extended to more

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 3, Issue 7, October 2014

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networks involving HF, VHF, UHF and Data

communication spread over the entire country,
particularly far-flung and remote areas of northeastern
regions and Jammu & Kashmir of India.
For the past 5 years, he has been teaching optical
fiber communication, Digital communication and optical
networks in the department of ECE at A K G
Engineering College, Ghaziabad, UP, INDIA. His
research area is in the field of optical communication.

Manu Yadav was born on May 17th,

1991 in Moradabad U.P. She is
hardworking, systematic, creative
with a will to learn and with a
ability to grasp things fast, enjoy
working
in
a
challenging
environment with confidence in her
knowledge, enjoy leading teams to
attain goal or to organize events etc, having a desire to
learn about new technologies and to work on them.
She is B.Tech (Electronics & Communication
Engineering) from CET Moradabad, U.P.. Currently she
is pursuing Masters of Technology (Electronics &
Communication Engineering) from Ajay Kumar Garg
Engineering College, Ghaziabad, U.P.

Prof. R.L.Sharma obtained M.Tech

degree in Optoelectronics and
Optical Fiber communication from
Indian institute of technology Delhi
(India) and Ph.D. degree from
Singhania University. He has about
35 years of rich experience in
maintaining,
supervising
and
managing large communication
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