Historical perspective of free space optical communications: from the early dates to today's developments

Abstract

This survey article discusses the revolutions of wireless communication technologies right from the prehistoric man's fire signals to today's space optical communications. A brief description of evaluations of communication technologies from the ancient Greece to today's mature telecommunication fields is discussed in this review paper. Principle, significance, demonstration and development of free space optical (FSO) communication technology over different decades are discussed. Major FSO channel limitations, temporal and spatial challenges of FSO communication system and their state-of-art mitigation techniques are presented. Classical quantitative analysis of reliability of FSO communication, developments on radio over FSO (RoFSO) and hybrid FSO/RF systems are also explained. Advanced developments of FSO communication techniques such as optical free space wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), sub-carrier multiplexing (SCM), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), visible light communications (VLC) and vehicular visible light communications (VVLC) are reported. Deep space optical communication systems and next generation FSO wireless terrestrial/global network architecture are summarised. Research challenges of FSO systems for internet of things/everything (IoT/IoE), 5G communication, mobile-network, terahertz spectrum, quantum communication and underwater optical applications are presented. Based on the review, we outlined the challenges that need to be addressed in near-future researches to realize full potential FSO communication systems.