Evolution of Short-Range Optical Wireless Communications (Tutorial)

The optical wireless communication (OWC) technology explores the broad unregulated optical spectrum to provide high-speed wireless communications, and the visible, ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelength ranges all have been investigated. Compared with the conventional radio frequency (RF) band, the spectrum in OWC systems is much less congested and the interference is much lower. The OWC technology also provides enhanced physical layer security due to the natural confinement of optical beams that makes it difficult to intercept the transmitted signal. Hence, the OWC technology has been widely studied and considered as a promising candidate in future beyond-5 G communications. The OWC technology has been considered for both long-range and short-range applications, and in this paper we will introduce the fundamentals and recent developments of short-range OWC systems. In particular, we will focus on the key short-range OWC applications in indoor personal or local area communications, underwater wireless communications, wireless data center networks, and vehicular communications. We will also introduce some recent widely studied advanced techniques to boost the performance of short-range OWC systems, including the spatial domain diversity, multiplexing and modulation principles to improve the system robustness and data rate, and the machine learning algorithms and hardware accelerators to suppress both linear and nonlinear effects to improve OWC signal quality and bit-error-rate performance.