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This Letter outlines radio-over-fiber combined with radio-over-free-space optics (RoFSO) and radio frequency free-space transmission, which is of particular relevance for fifth-generation networks. Here, the frequency band of 24-26 GHz is adopted to demonstrate a low-cost, compact, and high-energy-efficient solution based on the direct intensity modulation and direct detection scheme. For our proof-of-concept demonstration, we use 64 quadrature amplitude modulation with a 100 MHz bandwidth. We assess the link performance by exposing the RoFSO section to atmospheric turbulence conditions. Further, we show that the measured minimum error vector magnitude (EVM) is 4.7% and also verify that the proposed system with the free-space-optics link span of 100 m under strong turbulence can deliver an acceptable EVM of <9% with signal-to-noise ratio levels of 22 dB and 10 dB with and without turbulence, respectively.

Turbulence affects the performance of underwater wireless optical communications (UWOC). Although multiple scattering and absorption have been previously investigated by means of physical simulation models, still a physical simulation model is needed for UWOC with turbulence. In this paper, we propose a Monte Carlo simulation model for UWOC in turbulent oceanic clear water, which is far less computationally intensive than approaches based on computational fluid dynamics. The model is based on the variation of refractive index in a horizontal link. Results show that the proposed simulation model correctly reproduces lognormal probability density function of the received intensity for weak and moderate turbulence regimes. Results presented match well with experimental data reported for weak turbulence. Furthermore, scintillation index and turbulence-induced power loss versus link span are exhibited for different refractive index variations.

We propose a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme combined with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) for visible light communications (VLC), which offers a high throughput, flexible bandwidth allocation and a higher system capacity for a larger number of users. Bidirectional NOMA-OFDMA VLC is experimentally demonstrated. The effects of power allocation and channel estimation on the bit error rate performance are investigated. The experiment results indicate that accurate channel estimation can eliminate the inter-user interference more effectively. The optimum power allocation ratios for uplink and downlink are both about 0.25 in the case of two users.

Despite the benefits of free-space optical (FSO) communications, their full utilization is limited by the influence of atmospheric weather conditions, such as fog, turbulence, smoke, snow, etc. In urban environments, additional environmental factors such as smog and dust particles due to air pollution caused by industry and motor vehicles may affect FSO link performance, which has not been investigated in detail yet. Both smog and dust particles cause absorption and scattering of the propagating optical signal, thus resulting in high attenuation. This work investigates the joint impact of atmospheric turbulence and dust particle-imposed scattering on FSO link performance as part of the last-mile access network in urban areas. Propagation of an optical wave is at first analyzed based on the microphysic approach, and the extinction caused by small particles is determined. An experimental measurement campaign using a dedicated test chamber is carried out to assess FSO link performance operating wavelengths of 670 nm and 830 nm and under dust and turbulent conditions. The measured attenuation and the Q factor in terms of the velocity of particle flow and turbulence strength are analyzed. We show that for an airflow of 2 m/s, the Q factor is almost 3.5 higher at the wavelength of 830 nm than at 670 nm. However, for a wavelength of 670 nm, the FSO link is less affected by the increase in airflow compared to 830 nm. The Q factor reduces with turbulence. Under similar turbulence conditions, for ash particles, the Q factor is higher than that of sand particles.

Physical layer network coding (PNC) improves the throughput in wireless networks by enabling two nodes to exchange information using a minimum number of time slots. The PNC technique is proposed for two-way relay channel free space optical (TWR-FSO) communications with the aim of maximizing the utilization of network resources. The multipair TWR-FSO is considered in this paper, where a single antenna on each pair seeks to communicate via a common receiver aperture at the relay. Therefore, chip interleaving is adopted as a technique to separate the different transmitted signals at the relay node to perform PNC mapping. Accordingly, this scheme relies on the iterative multiuser technique for detection of users at the receiver. The bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed system is examined under the combined influences of atmospheric loss, turbulence-induced channel fading, and pointing errors (PEs). By adopting the joint PNC mapping with interleaving and multiuser detection techniques, the BER results show that the proposed scheme can achieve a significant performance improvement against the degrading effects of turbulences and PEs. It is also demonstrated that a larger number of simultaneous users can be supported with this new scheme in establishing a communication link between multiple pairs of nodes in two time slots, thereby improving the channel capacity.

A novel perturbation approach using additional metalized via-holes for implementation of the dual-band or wide-band dual-mode substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) filters is proposed in this paper. The independent perturbation on the first resonant mode TE101 can be constructed by applying the proposed perturbation approach, whereas the second resonant mode TE102 is not affected. Thus, new kinds of dual-band or wide-band dual-mode SIW filters with a fixed or an independently reconfigurable low-frequency band have been directly achieved. In order to experimentally verify the proposed design method, four two-cavity dual-band SIW filters, which have different numbers of perturbation via-holes in each cavity, and a two-cavity dual-band SIW filter, which includes four via-holes and eight reconfigurable states in each cavity, are designed and experimentally assessed. The measured results indicate that the available frequency-ratio range from 1 to 1.3 can be realized by using four two-cavity dual-band SIW filters. The center frequency of the first band can be tuned from 4.61 GHz to 5.24 GHz, whereas the center frequency of the second one is fixed at around 6.18 GHz for the two-cavity dual-band SIW filter with four reconfigurable states via-holes. All the simulated and measured results show an acceptable agreement with the predicted data.

This paper describes the experimental verification of the utilization of long-term evolution radio over fiber (RoF) and radio over free space optics (RoFSO) systems using dual-polarization signals for cloud radio access network applications determining the specific utilization limits. A number of free space optics configurations are proposed and investigated under different atmospheric turbulence regimes in order to recommend the best setup configuration. We show that the performance of the proposed link, based on the combination of RoF and RoFSO for 64 QAM at 2.6 GHz, is more affected by the turbulence based on the measured difference error vector magnitude value of 5.5%. It is further demonstrated the proposed systems can offer higher noise immunity under particular scenarios with the signal-to-noise ratio reliability limit of 5 dB in the radio frequency domain for RoF and 19.3 dB in the optical domain for a combination of RoF and RoFSO links.

In this paper, the influence of the rotating polarization-preserved optical feedback on the chaos synchronization of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is investigated experimentally. Two VCSELs' polarization modes (XP) and (YP) are gradually rotated and re-injected back into the VCSEL. The anti-phase dynamics synchronization of the two polarization modes is evaluated using the cross-correlation function. For a fixed optical feedback, a clear relationship is found between the cross-correlation coefficient and the polarization angle θp. It is shown that high-quality anti-phase polarization-resolved chaos synchronization is achieved at higher values of θp. The maximum value of the cross-correlation coefficient achieved is -0.99 with a zero time delay over a wide range of θp beyond 65° with a poor synchronization dynamic at θp less than 65°. Furthermore, it is observed that the antiphase irregular oscillation of the XP and YP modes changes with θp. VCSEL under the rotating polarization optical feedback can be a good candidate as a chaotic synchronization source for a secure communication system.

Joint effects of aperture averaging and beam width on the performance of free-space optical communication links, under the impairments of atmospheric loss, turbulence, and pointing errors (PEs), are investigated from an information theory perspective. The propagation of a spatially partially coherent Gaussian-beam wave through a random turbulent medium is characterized, taking into account the diverging and focusing properties of the optical beam as well as the scintillation and beam wander effects. Results show that a noticeable improvement in the average channel capacity can be achieved with an enlarged receiver aperture in the moderate-to-strong turbulence regime, even without knowledge of the channel state information. In particular, it is observed that the optimum beam width can be reduced to improve the channel capacity, albeit the presence of scintillation and PEs, given that either one or both of these adverse effects are least dominant. We show that, under strong turbulence conditions, the beam width increases linearly with the Rytov variance for a relatively smaller PE loss but changes exponentially with steeper increments for higher PE losses. Our findings conclude that the optimal beam width is dependent on the combined effects of turbulence and PEs, and this parameter should be adjusted according to the varying atmospheric channel conditions. Therefore, we demonstrate that the maximum channel capacity is best achieved through the introduction of a larger receiver aperture and a beam-width optimization technique.

A dual polarization (DP) radio over a free-space optical (FSO) communication link using a long-term evolution (LTE) radio signal is proposed and analyzed under different turbulence channel conditions. Radio signal transmission over the DP FSO channel is experimentally verified by means of error vector magnitude (EVM) statistics. We demonstrate that such a system, employing a 64 quadrature amplitude modulation at the frequency bands of 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz, evinces reliability with <8% of EVM in a turbulent channel. Based on the results, we show that transmitting the LTE signal over the FSO channel is a potential solution for last-mile access or backbone networks, when using multiple-input multiple-output based DP signals.

This Letter presents original measurement results from an all-optical 10 Gbit/s free-space optics (FSO) relay link involving two FSO links and an all-optical switch. Considering the fact that reported analyses of relay links are dominated by analytical findings, the experimental results represent a vital resource for evaluating the performance of relay FSO links in the presence of atmospheric turbulence. Bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the relay system is tested for single and dual-hop links under several turbulence regimes. Furthermore, results from this measurement are used to ascertain real parameters of the outdoor links and to improve the accuracy of simulation results. Results show that using a dual-hop FSO link against a single FSO link could result in up to four orders of magnitude improvement in BER in the presence of atmospheric turbulence.

We present a newly designed polymer light-emitting diode with a bandwidth of ~350  kHz for high-speed visible light communications. Using this new polymer light-emitting diode as a transmitter, we have achieved a record transmission speed of 10  Mb/s for a polymer light-emitting diode-based optical communication system with an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing technique, matching the performance of single carrier formats using multitap equalization. For achieving such a high data-rate, a power pre-emphasis technique was adopted.

This paper presents new experimental results on a polymer light-emitting diode based visible light communications system. For the first time we demonstrate a 10 Mb/s link based on the on-off keying data format with real time equalization on a field programmable gate array. The 10 Mb/s transmission speed is available at a bit error rate less than 4.6 × 10(-3), which is the limit for forward error correction. At a BER of 10(-6) a transmission speed of 7 Mb/s is readily achievable.

Optical beams propagating through the turbulent atmospheric channel suffer from both the attenuation and phase distortion. Since future wireless networks are envisaged to be deployed in the ad hoc mesh topology, this paper presents the experimental laboratory characterization of mitigation of turbulence induced signal fades for two ad hoc scenarios. Results from measurements of the thermal structure constant along the propagation channels, changes of the coherence lengths for different turbulence regimes and the eye diagrams for partially correlated turbulences in free space optical channels are discussed. Based on these results future deployment of optical ad hoc networks can be more straightforwardly planned.

The efficacy of spatial diversity in practical free-space optical communication systems is impaired by the fading correlation among the underlying subchannels. We consider in this paper the generation of correlated Gamma-Gamma random variables in view of evaluating the system outage probability and bit-error-rate under the condition of correlated fading. Considering the case of receive-diversity systems with intensity modulation and direct detection, we propose a set of criteria for setting the correlation coefficients on the small- and large-scale fading components based on scintillation theory. We verify these criteria using wave-optics simulations and further show through Monte Carlo simulations that we can effectively neglect the correlation corresponding to the small-scale turbulence in most practical systems, irrespective of the specific turbulence conditions. This has not been clarified before, to the best of our knowledge. We then present some numerical results to illustrate the effect of fading correlation on the system performance. Our conclusions can be generalized to the cases of multiple-beam and multiple-beam multiple-aperture systems.

This paper reports the experimental wavelet denoising techniques carried out for the first time for a number of modulation schemes for indoor optical wireless communications in the presence of fluorescent light interference. The experimental results are verified using computer simulations, clearly illustrating the advantage of the wavelet denoising technique in comparison to the high pass filtering for all baseband modulation schemes.

Free-Space Optical (FSO) communications link performance is highly affected when propagating through the time-spatially variable turbulent environment. In order to improve signal reception, several mitigation techniques have been proposed and analytically investigated. This paper presents experimental results for the route diversity technique evaluations for a specific case when several diversity links intersects a common turbulent area and concurrently each passing regions with different turbulence flows.

Joint beam width and spatial coherence length optimization is proposed to maximize the average capacity in partially coherent free-space optical links, under the combined effects of atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors. An optimization metric is introduced to enable feasible translation of the joint optimal transmitter beam parameters into an analogous level of divergence of the received optical beam. Results show that near-ideal average capacity is best achieved through the introduction of a larger receiver aperture and the joint optimization technique.

In this paper a hybrid modulation scheme based on pulse position modulation (PPM) and binary phase shift keying subcarrier intensity modulation (BPSK-SIM) schemes for free-space optical communications is proposed. The analytical bit error rate (BER) performance is investigated in weak and saturated turbulence channels and results are verified with the simulation data. Results show that performance of PPM-BPSK-SIM is superior to BPSK-SIM in all turbulence regimes; however, it outperforms 2-PPM for the turbulence variance σ(1)(2)>0.2. PPM-BPSK-SIM offers a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain of 50 dB in the saturation regime compared to BPSK at a BER of 10(-6). The SNR gain in comparison to PPM improves as the strength of the turbulence level increases.

On the basis of a previously derived mathematical model, the power penalty associated with a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) demultiplexer was calculated, with timing jitter noise, bit-to-bit cross talk, and channel cross talk taken into consideration. Simulation results show that a 3-dBm improvement in the receiver sensitivity at a bit error rate of 10(-9) can be achieved by choice of the appropriate walk-off time between the control and the signal pulses within the NOLM demultiplexer.