Quality Metrics and Reliability Analysis of Laser Communication System

Beam wandering is the main cause for major power loss in laser communication. To analyse this prerequisite at our environment, a 155 Mbps data transmission experimental setup is built with necessary optoelectronic components for the link range of 0.5 km at an altitude of 15.25 m. A neuro-controller is developed inside the FPGA and used to stabilise the received beam at the centre of detector plane. The Q-factor and bit error rate variation profiles are calculated using the signal statistics obtained from the eye-diagram. The performance improvements on the laser communication system due to the incorporation of beam wandering mitigation control are investigated and discussed in terms of various communication quality assessment key parameters.

Introduction to free space optical (FSO) communications

The demand for high bandwidth and secure communication is increasing. Free space optical (FSO) wireless communications technology could be one possible alternative option to the RF technologies that can be adopted in certain applications to unlock the bandwidth bottleneck issue, specifically in the last mile access networks, between mobile base stations in RF cellular wireless networks, and for radio over fiber; and over the last decade, we have seen growing research and development activities in FSO communications in the field of high data rate wireless technology applications as well as the emergence of commercial systems

A Vision and Framework for the High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) Networks of the Future

A High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) is a network node that operates in the stratosphere at an of altitude around 20 km and is instrumental for providing communication services. Precipitated by technological innovations in the areas of autonomous avionics, array antennas, solar panel efficiency levels, and battery energy densities, and fueled by flourishing industry ecosystems, the HAPS has emerged as an indispensable component of next-generations of wireless networks. In this article, we provide a vision and framework for the HAPS networks of the future supported by a comprehensive and state-of-the-art literature review. We highlight the unrealized potential of HAPS systems and elaborate on their unique ability to serve metropolitan areas. The latest advancements and promising technologies in the HAPS energy and payload systems are discussed. The integration of the emerging Reconfigurable Smart Surface (RSS) technology in the communications payload of HAPS systems for providing a cost-effective deployment is proposed. A detailed overview of the radio resource management in HAPS systems is presented along with synergistic physical layer techniques, including Faster-Than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling. Numerous aspects of handoff management in HAPS systems are described. The notable contributions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in HAPS, including machine learning in the design, topology management, handoff, and resource allocation aspects are emphasized. The extensive overview of the literature we provide is crucial for substantiating our vision that depicts the expected deployment opportunities and challenges in the next 10 years (next-generation networks), as well as in the subsequent 10 years (next-next-generation networks).Comment: To appear in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorial

The impact of visibility range and atmospheric turbulence on free space optical link performance in South Africa.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.In the recent years, the development of 5G and Massive Internet of Things (MIoT) technologies are fast increasing regularly. The high demand for a back-up and complimentary link to the existing conventional transmission systems (such as RF technology) especially for the “last-mile” phenomenon has increased significantly. Therefore, this has brought about a persistent requirement for a better and free spectrum availability with a higher data transfer rate and larger bandwidth, such as Free Space Optics (FSO) technology using very high frequency (194 −545 ) transmission system. There is currently unavailable comprehensive information that would enable the design of FSO networks for various regions of South Africa based on the impact of certain weather parameters such as visibility range (mainly in terms of fog and haze) and atmospheric turbulence (in terms of Refractive Index Structure Parameter (RISP)) on FSO link performance. The components of the first part of this work include Visibility Range Distribution (VRD) modeling using suitable probability density function (PDF) models, and prediction of the expected optical attenuation due to scattering and its cumulative distribution and modeling. The VRD modelling performed in this work, proposed various location-based PDF models, and it was suggested that the Generalized Pareto distribution model best suited the distributions of visibility in all the cities. The result of this work showed that the optical attenuation due to scattering within the coastal and near-coastal areas could reach as high as 169 / or more, while in the non-coastal areas it varies between 34 / and 169 /, which suggests significant atmospheric effects on the FSO link, mostly during the winter period. The BER performance analysis was performed and suitable mitigating techniques (such as 4 × 4 MIMO with BPSK and L-PPM schemes) were suggested in this work. The general two-term exponential distribution model provided a good fit to the cumulative distribution of the atmospheric attenuation due to scattering for all the locations. In order to ascertain how atmospheric variables contribute or affect the visibility range, which in turn determines the level of attenuation due to scattering, a time series prediction of visibility using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique was investigated, where an average reliability of about 83 % was achieved for all the stations considered. This suggests that climatic parameters highly correlate to visibility when they are all combined together, and this gave significant predictions which will enable FSO officials to develop and maintain a strategic plan for the future years. The modules of the second part of this work encompass the determination of the Atmospheric Turbulence Level (ATL) for each of the locations in terms of RISP (2) and its equivalent scintillation index, and then the estimation of the optical attenuation due to scintillation. The cumulative distributions of the optical attenuation due to scintillation and its modeling were also carried out. This research work has been able to achieve the prediction of the ground turbulence strength (through the US-Army Research Laboratory (US-ARL) Model) in terms of RISP using climatic data. In an attempt to provide a more reliable study into the atmospheric turbulence strength within South Africa, this work explores the characteristic behavior of several meteorological variables and other thermodynamic properties such as inner and outer characteristic scales, Monin-Obhukov length, potential temperature gradient, bulk wind shear and so on. According to the predicted RISP from meteorological variables (such as temperature, relative humidity, pressure, wind speed, water vapour, and altitude), location-based and general attenuation due to scintillation models were developed for South Africa to estimate the optical attenuation. The attenuation due to scintillation results show that the summer and autumn seasons have higher ATL, where January, February and December have the highest mean RISP across all the locations under study. Also, the comparison of the monthly averages of the estimated attenuations revealed that at 850 nm more atmospheric turbulence with specific attenuations between 21.04 / and 24.45 / were observed in the coastal and near-coastal areas than in the non-coastal areas. The study proposes the two-term Sum of Sine distribution model for the cumulative distribution of the optical attenuation based on scintillation, which should be adopted for South Africa. The obtained results in this work for the contributions of scattering and turbulence to the optical link, and the design of the link budget will serve as the major criteria parameters to further compare the outcomes of these results with that of the available terrestrial FSO systems and other conventional transmission systems like RF systems

A review of communication-oriented optical wireless systems

This article presents an overview of optical wireless (OW) communication systems that operate both in the short- (personal and indoor systems) and the long-range (outdoor and hybrid) regimes. Each of these areas is discussed in terms of (a) key requirements, (b) their application framework, (c) major impairments and applicable mitigation techniques, and (d) current and/or future trends. Personal communication systems are discussed within the context of point-to-point ultra-high speed data transfer. The most relevant application framework and related standards are presented, including the next generation Giga-IR standard that extends personal communication speeds to over 1 Gb/s. As far as indoor systems are concerned, emphasis is given on modeling the dispersive nature of indoor OW channels, on the limitations that dispersion imposes on user mobility and dispersion mitigation techniques. Visible light communication systems, which provide both illumination and communication over visible or hybrid visible/ infrared LEDs, are presented as the most important representative of future indoor OW systems. The discussion on outdoor systems focuses on the impact of atmospheric effects on the optical channel and associated mitigation techniques that extend the realizable link lengths and transfer rates. Currently, outdoor OW is commercially available at 10 Gb/s Ethernet speeds for Metro networks and Local-Area-Network interconnections and speeds are expected to increase as faster and more reliable optical components become available. This article concludes with hybrid optical wireless/radio-frequency (OW/RF) systems that employ an additional RF link to improve the overall system reliability. Emphasis is given on cooperation techniques between the reliable RF subsystem and the broadband OW system