Low cost transmitter and receiver for a short-range optical wireless communications and their year evaluation results

There have been continuing efforts for using the optical wireless (OWL) or free-space communication as an effective way of connecting subscribers to a fiber backbone. Poor link availability in a hostile weather environment is still an issue for OWL link. Various schemes including the use of RF backup link to improve the availability have been proposed. This paper presents a designed low cost, short-range OWL transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx). Standard packaging techniques were used for mounting optical components and communication devices to cut down the manufacturing cost. The aperture size of the Tx and Rx was ∼5 cm. The beam divergence, wavelength, and calculated link margin for 120 m are 2 mrad, 3 dB and 1310 nm, respectively. Details of evaluation results in bad weather conditions including a record snow fall, record fog, and cloud burst rains are presented.