Self-orienting receiver for indoor wireless infrared links at high bit rates

We propose the use of self-orientation receivers as an alternative to conventional angle diversity receivers for high speed infrared non line-of-sight links indoor wireless local area networks. The design of these novel receivers is based on giving self-orientation capability to their optical front-end. This new property simplifies the receiver structure and optimizes link quality parameters. We present simulation results for channel parameters when such a receiver is used in different link configurations with several kinds of multiple beam transmitters, considering both natural and artificial lighting sources. These results show remarkable improvements, in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and bandwidth, when self-oriented receivers are employed instead of conventional angle diversity receivers. The influence of the transmitter beam width and the receiver field-of-view over the system performance is also analyzed.