Optical Wireless Communication Technologies

Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) is a line-of-sight wireless communication system in which data is transmitted in the form of laser beams. OWC is one of the best communication systems because of its high bandwidth, permissionless, highest transfer data rate, and ultra-high security. The development of OWC has increased extensively over the past decade, aided by the availability of powerful system components developed for the field of optical fiber communications. OWCs mainly pass through channels such as free space, the earth's atmosphere, seawater, and interstellar space. However, the channel environment, such as the atmosphere, will seriously affect the wavefront performance of light, causing intersymbol crosstalk and resulting in an increase in the communication bit error rate (BER). Therefore, how to improve the communication performance of OWC in different channels is a focus of researchers.

The current research on OWC technology mainly focuses on an advanced optical terminal and photoelectric system fusion design to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of light, using an efficient pointing acquiring and tracking (APT) unit to obtain better beam pointing, and studying the influence of atmospheric turbulence and seawater channels on the performance of light waves for obtaining optimal design parameters. There is also a focus on employing advanced modulation, demodulation and error correction coding technology to get higher transmission rate and lower BER, studying OWC ad hoc network protocols and advanced network topology structure to achieve the purpose of networking applications, and so on. This Research Topic will therefore discuss the related technologies of OWC, so that researchers can better understand the composition of OWC technology, grasp the latest trends in OWC technology development, and achieve the goal of promoting the development of OWC technology.

We seek high-quality submissions related to (but not limited to) one or more of the following
topics:

● Present and future optical wireless communication terminals, systems and links
● Atmospheric propagation, transmission effects and compensation techniques
● Adaptive optics technology in OWCs
● Advanced optical signal processing technologies
● Optical communication ad hoc network and network topology
● Visible light and underwater optical communication technologies

Researchers are encouraged to submit complete unpublished papers, exploring emerging technologies in Optical Wireless Communication.

Keywords: optical wireless communications, optical signal processing, optical communication network, optical propagation, adaptive optics

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.