Ultra-High-Speed Visible/InVisible Light Communication

Application Testing

Professor Name：Hai-Han Lu
Cooperation Partner： Arno Electro-Optics Ltd.
Patent： I 601393、I 634756、I 638536

Recently, visible/invisible light communication (VLC/IVLC) system has attracted a lot of attention as a potential candidate for the indoor wireless communication because VLC/IVLC has several advantages over traditional RF-based wireless communication. It can provide many advantages such as communication links in specific areas in which RF communication is prohibited, like in a hospital or in an aircraft.
The development of the optical wireless communication (OWC) system is toward providing high-speed and long-reach free-space optical (FSO) links. For an actual realization of OWC system, constructing high-speed and long-reach FSO links is the key concern of system engineers. To construct a high-speed and long-reach OWC system, however, system engineers should have to adopt an efficient method to solve the problem of heavy data loading for free-space transmissions. It is needed to develop a configuration with low complexity. In this demonstration, we propose and practically demonstrate a high-speed and long-reach PAM4 OWC system. A total wavelength of 8 wavelengths (4 odd wavelengths for upper OWC link and 4 even wavelengths for lower OWC link) is attained, for each wavelength carrying PAM4 signal with a data rate of 50 Gb/s (25 Gbaud/s). A PAM4 OWC system with a total data rate of 400 Gb/s (50 Gb/s/λ  8λ) over a 500-m free-space transmission is demonstrated. To authors’ understanding, it is the foremost one to practically establish a 400 Gb/s/500 m PAM4 OWC system. This proposed high-speed and long-reach PAM4 OWC system is a prominent candidate for achieving high data rate and long free-space transmission characteristics.