Reflection based coupling efficiency enhancement in a fluorescent planar concentrator for an optical wireless receiver

Fluorescent planar concentrators have been proposed as optical concentrators that can have both a wide field of view and a high optical gain stemming from a large collection area for optical wireless communications. However, the fluorescent concentrators with such a large collection area often lead to a low light coupling efficiency due to the edge coupling mechanism leading to a considerable optical power loss. In this work, an analysis of the light coupling efficiency enhancement in the electrical power gain is presented. In particular, a practical method to improve the coupling efficiency by introducing edge and back reflection using Lambertian-, specular-, and retro-reflectors is presented. It is demonstrated that by choosing the optimal reflectors, the received signal strength can be improved by more than a factor of two. Also demonstrated with the proposed method is a data rate more than 1.12 Gbps with bit error rate less than 3.8 × 10 −3 using a DC-biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first Gbps class demonstration using a commercial fluorescent planar concentrator.