Optical wireless communication network with adaptive transmitter array

Abstract

Urban optical wireless communication (UOWC) network transceivers are placed on high rise buildings. There are two common problems that UOWC systems deal with: poor weather conditions and building sway. The building sway impairs optical wireless network performance due to the narrow beam divergence angle of the user transmitter. One solution is to use a transmitter with narrow divergence angle beam that can be steered in order to compensate for building sway. In our work, we propose a discrete pointing scheme based on a 2D array of narrow-beam lasers that are switched consecutively in order to compensate for building sway of the uplink. This solution is both simple and low cost. A performance comparison of two configurations of optical wireless communication systems uplink is presented: a) wide divergence angle transmitter, b) adaptive, discrete pointing system based on a 2D laser array. An example of a practical communication link is also presented.