12 Gbit/s indoor optical wireless communication system with ultrafast beam-steering using tunable VCSEL.

ABSTRACT

Optical wireless communication (OWC) using line-of-sight connections has great application potential for indoor scenes due to its advantages of high data transmission speed and privacy. In our proposed system, we use infrared tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) as light source, array waveguide gratings (AWG) combined with 6 × 6 integrated optical fiber arrays as a router to realize ultrafast beam-steering and high capacity point-to-point data transmission, which makes the indoor OWC system compact, low-cost, and easy to install. The high tuning rate of VCSEL enables the channel switching to be completed within 1.7 µs. Based on the modulation format of non-return-to-zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK), a data rate of 12 Gbit/s per channel can be realized with high sensitivity through 3.1 m free space when the detected optical power is low. The system is proved to be a flexible link with high-speed communication for mobile terminals in a limited space.