Point-to-multipoint holographic beamsteering techniques for indoor optical wireless communications

摘要

Fibre-to-the-home deployment is enabling ultra-high speed communications to reach the end-user in many cities. Most users would like to access this capacity using wireless devices. However, available wireless technologies can handle data rates often many orders of magnitude slower than those potentially offered by the fibre infrastructure. This paper describes an optical wireless architecture that bridges this gap by using the light directly from the fibre to create an indoor point-to-multipoint transparent distribution system. The approach is all optical, thus inherently independent of the data-rate and modulation formats. A holographic beamsteering device is used to direct narrow 1550 nm beams to the receivers' locations. Specifically, a spatial light modulator (SLM), assisted by angle magnification optics allowed for a ±30° field-of-view coverage in both the horizontal and vertical directions. In this work we experimentally study two different methods to generate the point-to-multipoint capability: spatial division of the SLM in independent phase-programmable regions and the Gerchberg-Saxton (GS) multipoint hologram generation algorithm. These methods were compared for a 2-beam beamsteering system at a range of ～ 2 meters. Results show that the spatial division approach creates more stable links with higher optical margins. However, the GS-based steering offers a more scalable solution for a point-to-multipoint architecture that addresses a large number of end-users.