Design aspects of high-performance indoor optical wireless transceivers [LAN applications]

The ever-increasing use of portable computing and multimedia terminals in recent years has led to keen interests in the area of high-speed wireless digital links and local area networks. In indoor environments, optical wireless technology offers major performance advantages over radio and microwave technologies. But several aspects limit the performance of indoor optical wireless systems. Important ones being; eye safety problems, speed limitation of the optoelectronic devices, high path loss, multipath dispersion, and noise induced by natural and artificial light on the receiving photo diodes. This paper considers these system performance-limiting factors and presents the design aspects of eye-safe and high-performance indoor optical wireless link transmitters and receivers (transceivers) suitable for wireless local area networks.