Optical Wireless Communication With Adaptive Focus and MEMS-Based Beam Steering

An optical wireless communication system for an operation with wavelengths detectable by silicon optoelectronic integrated circuits is described. We use direct modulated vertical cavity surface emitting lasers as a transmitter. The field of view of the laser beam is adjusted with an adaptive optical system and aligned with a micro-electro-mechanical system based mirror for beam steering. To receive the modulated laser beam, we develop a receiver chip in 0.35 μm BiCMOS technology. The experimental system shows a 3 Gb/s wireless transmission over a distance of 7 m with a bit-error rate <;10^-9 without cost intensive optical components and complex adjustment procedure.