Enhanced Link Directionality for Optical Wireless Communications

An integrated photoconductive (PC) sensor is proposed and tested as a fundamental extension of the semiconductor switch. An enhanced field-of-view (FOV) is demonstrated for application to indoor optical wireless communications (OWC). The three-fold symmetric architecture of the corner-cube PC sensor is adapted for use with the dc-shifted ac-three-phase $({\rm ac}_{3\phi})$ to establish output photocurrent characteristics that are largely independent of the incident optical angle-of-arrival. An enhanced FOV of $60^{\circ}\times 40^{\circ}$ is demonstrated. The device can be integrated in future OWC systems for increased channel redundancy and greater reliability.