An optically powered, free space optical communications receiver

Two of the key components of sensor motes are a power source and a communications receiver. One approach to creating very small motes is to use free space optical communication and to scavenge power from the optical downlink. In this paper photodiodes are described that were made on a standard CMOS process and generate electrical power from the downlink beam. These photodiodes can be used to power the optical receiver that converts the modulation on the downlink to a bit stream.