AEU - International Journal of Electronics and Communications
Regular paperOptical wireless communications omnidirectional receivers for vehicular communications
Introduction
The tetherless teleoperation of vehicles [1] using high-definition video, dense LIDAR data [2] and haptic virtual telepresence needs the existence of a broadband omnidirectional wireless system, whose implementation in tunnels, requires the use of optical wireless communications (OWC) to mitigate the intense attenuation that non-optical wavelengths have in those environments [3]. Tunnels are a common traffic infrastructure, with many not designed for high traffic volumes, forcing the implementation of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) visible light communications (VLC) integrated [4] in cooperative intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Vehicular communications using VLC-ITS, obligate the development of omnidirectional free-space optical (OFSO) receivers to mitigate the effects of turbulence [5] and pointing errors [6] in the propagation channel [7]. Targeting that objective, this work presents high aperture and field-of-view (FOV) FSO receivers using wavelength shifting (WLS) fibers with fluorescence and lifetime [8] characteristics compatible with high speed photodetectors. After verifying the suitability of WLS fiber for OWC, the sensitivities of spiral and toroidal WLS-OFSO receivers are evaluated with light generated by blue light-emitting diodes (LED), modulated with continuous sine waves or pulsed Direct-Current biased Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) signals.
Section snippets
OFSO photodetection theoretical considerations
The two most important characteristics of an OFSO receiver are the receiving area (aperture) and FOV that are inversely related in geometrical optics because of the conservation of the etendue of light [9]. Standard flat photodetectors have a maximum FOV equal to half a sphere ( sr), with that value being reduced when the semiconductor die is mounted inside a deep cavity in a windowed case. The photon radiant flux received in the area of flat photodetectors falls with the cosine of the angle
Experimental setups
Experiments implementing type-1 receivers were undertaken using three different avalanche photodiodes (APD) described in Table 1, bare or coupled to Saint-Gobain BCF-91A and BCF-92 WLS fibers, with 12 and 2.7 ns decay time, respectively. After an initial WSL fiber evaluation, four types of single cladding WLS fiber with 0.8 mm diameters were ordered, BCF-92 WLS fiber doped with different levels of fluorescent dye concentrations (standard, half, double), and the photodetectors were selected for an
Results and discussion
An evaluation procedure was executed to identify a WLS fiber suitable for use in the implementation of OFSO receivers. Frequency response characterizations were made with two different decay time fluorescent materials used in the BCF-91A and BCF-92 fibers, and after confirming that BCF-91A is not suited for broadband OWC, the influence of BCF-92 fiber fluorescent dye concentration in the OWC receiver optical gain, was measured. Together with this WLS fiber OWC characterization, a procedure to
Conclusions
Our subject has been the development of OFSO receivers for vehicular OWC where the field of vision is normally limited with implementation restrictions. The 0 to 360 degrees flat gain of the toroidal receiver demonstrates its potential for use in V2I-OWC, to complement the more sensitive spiral arrangement that was developed with the intention to be integrated in vehicles where a 360-degree line-of-sight does not exist. V2V communication for tunnel traffic control is an application example,
Acknowledgement
This work was funded by Penguin Automated Systems Inc.
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