High bit rate data transmission within buildings for wireless digital cameras

Radio-based transmission of high bit rate data within buildings opens up many possibilities for new applications. Wherever a terminal or data transmission equipment require rapid installation, relocation or portability a wireless solution may be the preferable or only option. One such application is a wireless digital camera. The mobility of traditional television cameras is often restricted by cabling requirements. Existing indoor wireless technology can provide data rates up to a few Mbps. For HDTV cameras, however, bit rates of 68 Mbps and greater for compressed digital video will be required. At such high bit rates, multipath is a major problem for radio-based data transmission within buildings. The technique proposed in the present paper to overcome the limitations of the indoor radio channel for high bit rate data transmission is orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, or OFDM. A simulation model of an ODFM-based system has been developed. The model includes an OFDM transmitter, a channel model and an OFDM receiver. Indoor radiowave propagation measurements carried out by the authors have been used to derive accurate channel modes for the OFDM simulation. Typical bit error results are presented demonstrating the feasibility of the OFDM technique for wireless digital cameras