Recent Advances in Visible Light Communication and Optical Wireless Information Systems

A special issue of Inventions (ISSN 2411-5134). This special issue belongs to the section "Inventions and Innovation in Electrical Engineering/Energy/Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2024) | Viewed by 11236

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Signal Detection and Processing in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, School of Information Science and Engineering, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China
Interests: wireless optical communication and networking; visible light communication and positioning; free space optical communication; wireless optical physical layer security; secure wireless optical communication
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As emerging and promising candidates for 6G, visible light communications and other emerging wireless optical techniques are earning increasing attention and investigation from both the wireless communication and the optical communication communities. These various and distinct hybrid techniques open novel research opportunities for numerous application scenarios, including but not limited to indoor wireless communications, indoor positioning and sensing, wireless backhaul, vehicular applications, underwater wireless applications, satellite applications, underground wireless applications, high-speed train applications, healthcare wireless applications, retro reflection communications applications, unmanned aerial vehicular wireless applications, and other developing fields.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together the research accomplishments provided by researchers from academia and industry. The main goal is to show the latest research works in the field of visible light communications and positioning as well as hybrid optical wireless techniques, especially for empowering 6G development. We encourage prospective authors to submit related research papers on the following subjects: emerging wireless optical communications; visible light communications, positioning and sensing; hybrid optical wireless; free-space optics; radio over fiber; THz communications; and B5G/6G.

Dr. Jupeng Ding
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • visible light communication
  • visible light positioning
  • optical wireless techniques
  • optical wireless communication
  • optical wireless positioning
  • optical wireless sensing
  • underwater optical communication & sensing
  • free space optics
  • radio over fiber
  • THz Communications
  • 6G
  • B5G

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4827 KiB  
Communication
Coverage Performance of Non-Lambertian Underwater Wireless Optical Communications for 6G Internet of Things
by Jupeng Ding, Chih-Lin I, Jintao Wang and Jian Song
Inventions 2024, 9(3), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions9030049 - 28 Apr 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1397
Abstract
In medium- and short-range underwater application scenarios, thanks to the superior performance in transmission bandwidth, link latency, and security, underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) is growing to be a promising complement to the mature underwater acoustic communication technique. In order to extend the [...] Read more.
In medium- and short-range underwater application scenarios, thanks to the superior performance in transmission bandwidth, link latency, and security, underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) is growing to be a promising complement to the mature underwater acoustic communication technique. In order to extend the future 6G Internet of Things (IOT) to various challenging and valuable underwater scenarios, the underwater spatial coverage and transmission performance has been actively discussed in typical seawater environments. However, almost all current works focus on underwater scenarios including light-emitting diode (LED) transmitters with well-known Lambertian optical beams and fail to characterize the scenarios adopting LED transmitters with distinctive non-Lambertian beam patterns. For addressing this limitation, in this article, the coverage performance of non-Lambertian UWOC for 6G is analyzed and illustrated. Furthermore, the switchable optical beam configuration scheme is proposed and estimated for UWOC. Numerical results illustrate that, compared with about 15.42 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) fluctuation amplitude for UWOC with baseline Lambertian optical beam configuration, the corresponding SNR fluctuation amplitudes of UWOC based with two typical non-Lambertian optical beams are 8.71 dB and 24.60 dB. Furthermore, once the receiver depth is increased to 6.0 m, the SNR fluctuation amplitude for the above three UWOC coverage with distinct beam configuration could be reduced to 5.61 dB, 1.58 dB, and 10.33 dB, respectively. Full article
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12 pages, 1176 KiB  
Communication
Photonic Integrated Circuits for Microwave Astronomy
by Guillermo Pascual-Cisneros, Francisco J. Casas and Patricio Vielva
Inventions 2023, 8(6), 135; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions8060135 - 26 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1696
Abstract
One of the main objectives of cosmology is the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization and, in particular, the so-called B-modes, which could demonstrate the existence of the primordial gravitational waves generated at the early stages of the Universe. For this [...] Read more.
One of the main objectives of cosmology is the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization and, in particular, the so-called B-modes, which could demonstrate the existence of the primordial gravitational waves generated at the early stages of the Universe. For this reason, a new integrated version of the heterodyne polarimeter photonic part shown on a previously proposed scheme that can be used in both direct imaging and interferometric instruments is presented. We have tested its properties using specific commercial software, obtaining promising results. Working as a direct imaging instrument, it is shown that the proposed polarimeter can provide sufficiently low polarization angle and polarization efficiency systematic errors, which are considered acceptable for current ground-based CMB polarization experiments dedicated to the characterization of the foreground signals affecting the lowest part of the frequency spectrum. Full article
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19 pages, 1330 KiB  
Article
Closed-Form Hyper-Rayleigh Mode Analysis of the Fluctuating Double-Rayleigh with Line-of-Sight Fading Channel
by Aleksey S. Gvozdarev, Tatiana K. Artemova, Aleksandra M. Alishchuk and Marina A. Kazakova
Inventions 2023, 8(4), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions8040087 - 3 Jul 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1341
Abstract
The research studies hyper-Rayleigh behavior of a wireless communication system functioning in the presence of the generalized multipath fading. Although the initial metric (hyper-Rayleigh mode (HRM)) is quite informative, it is defined only asymptotically (i.e., for the infinitely increasing SNR). In spite of [...] Read more.
The research studies hyper-Rayleigh behavior of a wireless communication system functioning in the presence of the generalized multipath fading. Although the initial metric (hyper-Rayleigh mode (HRM)) is quite informative, it is defined only asymptotically (i.e., for the infinitely increasing SNR). In spite of mathematical simplifications brought by such a definition (i.e., in this case most of the performance characteristics defining the HRM can be easily evaluated), it sufficiently limits its applications since, evidently, the real-life systems function in the presence of a finite (and usually not very high) SNR. The study presents a novel approach to the fading channel analysis (i.e., finite signal-to-noise ratio hyper-Rayleigh mode (fHRM)). The proposed metric (fHRM) is studied on the newly presented channel model-fluctuating double-Rayleigh with Line-of-Sight (fdRLoS) fading model. To accomplish this, the novel expressions for two channel-dependent system characteristics (i.e., the Amount of Fading (AoF) and the Outage Probability (OP)) were derived in exact form valid for arbitrary fading parameters. Based on the derived expressions, the finite SNR hyper-Rayleigh map is obtained, which helps to identify the parameters’ values corresponding to the specific propagation scenarios, which were further deployed to analyze the problem of the communication link physical layer security quantified in terms of the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity (SPSC). Numerical verification of the derived closed-form expressions was performed. Several peculiarities of the system performance are observed and discussed. Full article
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17 pages, 696 KiB  
Article
Efficient Clustering of Visible Light Communications in VANET
by Yu-Yen Chen and Pi-Chung Wang
Inventions 2023, 8(4), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions8040083 - 29 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1350
Abstract
The deployment of vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is crucial to the development of autonomous vehicles. Radio frequency (RF) technology has been employed to transmit messages between vehicles and infrastructure in VANET. However, the limited RF bands may cause interference when vehicles transmit [...] Read more.
The deployment of vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is crucial to the development of autonomous vehicles. Radio frequency (RF) technology has been employed to transmit messages between vehicles and infrastructure in VANET. However, the limited RF bands may cause interference when vehicles transmit messages in a high-density environment. Moreover, when numerous vehicles transmit messages to the infrastructure at the same time, the simultaneous transmissions may cause channel congestion. While the issue of signal interference can be solved by the techniques of Visible Light Communication (VLC), vehicle clustering can be employed to improve the transmission performance of vehicles. VLC is an emerging technology with the advantage of immunity to electromagnetic interference. The technique of vehicle clustering categorizes vehicles into different sets, where each set has a leader for intra-cluster messaging. In this work, we present a clustering algorithm for VANET based on VLC. Our algorithm estimates the positions of vehicles based on their current movements. Then, it selects cluster heads based on the number of neighboring vehicles and generates clusters. We evaluate the performance of our scheme for both urban and highway scenarios. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can minimize the number of clusters and improve the transmission data rate for vehicles. Full article
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15 pages, 15327 KiB  
Article
A 0.18 μm CMOS Millimeter Wave Antenna-on-Chip with Artificial Magnetic Conductor Design
by Ming-An Chung, Chia-Chun Hsu, Siao-Rong Huang and Pin-Rui Huang
Inventions 2023, 8(3), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions8030078 - 2 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1899
Abstract
This paper presents a small-size broadband slot monopole chip antenna for millimeter wave application. Using a 0.18 μm CMOS process, through metal_1, the artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) of the metal layer increased the impedance bandwidth of the chip antenna. The additional inverted C [...] Read more.
This paper presents a small-size broadband slot monopole chip antenna for millimeter wave application. Using a 0.18 μm CMOS process, through metal_1, the artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) of the metal layer increased the impedance bandwidth of the chip antenna. The additional inverted C branch was used to achieve a better reflection coefficient. By adding an AMC and inverted C branch, the operating frequency of the chip antenna went to 33.8–110 GHz below the reflection coefficient of −10 dB, and its fractional bandwidth was 103.4%. The maximum gain was −6.3 dBi at 72 GHz. The overall chip size was 1.2 × 1.2 (mm2). Through measurement and verification, the proposed antenna reflection coefficient was close to the simulation trend and had better resonance. The frequency range of the chip antenna proposed in this paper covered the 5G NR FR2 band (24.2 GHz–52.6 GHz) and W-band (75 GHz–110 GHz). The proposed chip antenna can be applied to the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, biomedical electronics, near field sensing and other related fields. Full article
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14 pages, 6117 KiB  
Article
Designed on 0.18 μm CMOS Process Small Size Broadband Millimeter Wave Chip Antenna
by Ming-An Chung, Siao-Rong Huang and Pin-Rui Huang
Inventions 2023, 8(3), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions8030064 - 25 Apr 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1929
Abstract
This paper proposes a small-size broadband triangular monopole chip antenna for millimeter wave band applications. Process using 0.18 μm CMOS process and antenna design using Met-al_6. Triangular patch design and feed line length analysis to achieve a better reflection coefficient and also dig [...] Read more.
This paper proposes a small-size broadband triangular monopole chip antenna for millimeter wave band applications. Process using 0.18 μm CMOS process and antenna design using Met-al_6. Triangular patch design and feed line length analysis to achieve a better reflection coefficient and also dig three circular slots at the grounding point to achieve better impedance matching. The operating frequency of the chip antenna is 62–100 GHz below the reflection coefficient −10 dB standard, with a fractional bandwidth of 54%. The maximum gain is −0.4 dBi at 64 GHz. The efficiency is 40.9%. The overall chip size is 1.2 × 1.2 (mm2). After measurement and verification, the proposed antenna reflection coefficient is similar to the simulation trend and has better resonance. The chip antenna frequency range proposed in this article covers the 5G NR FR2 frequency band. The proposed chip antenna can be applied in related fields such as the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, and biomedical electronics. Full article
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