Next Generation Optical Wireless Communication Systems Using Fiber Direct Coupled Optical Antennas

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

“…The transmission optics at the Tx station has the control over the optical beam width, thus, the control of inter FSO channel interference would be possible by appropriate selection of beam width. A suitable RoFSO and/or RF/FSO has to be designed as a hybrid approach (one can back up the other) to avail the strength and compensate the weakness of both channels particularly for the next generation network applications of MIMO battlefield environment monitoring, intelligent and highly secured data transportation and tele-surgery systems [101,102]. An expected next generation communication network structure is shown in Fig.…”

“…Almost, all ground stations, terrestrial links, and space satellite links are connected with the optical carrier with the high data transmission rate. One attractive application field of this structure is to establish a heterogeneous (cable, RF, FSO, and optical fibre) network to provide ultra-high bandwidth wireless service in ground and space [102]. The optoelectronic components that are being used for high bandwidth fibre optic communication technology can also be used in FSO systems since both pursue almost similar transmission protocols and modulation techniques.…”

Free-Space Terabit Optical Interconnects

“…The agreement between FSO and high-capacity coherent communications emerge when using seamless fiber-FSO links, where the free-space receiver consists of a collimator, capable of gathering the FSO signal and directly collimate it into the fiber-core. This architecture removes all optical-to-electrical (O/E) conversion at the FSO receiver, thus allowing to keep intact the full bandwidth inherent to optical fibers [11]. These characteristics potentiate the integration of seamless fiber-FSO links in any type of systems supporting high-capacity transmission, which might be required to transport ultrawide bandwidth signals or signals multiplexed in polarization, wavelength and/or amplitude [12].…”